


Dream Man

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
Genre: Dream Sex, Dream Sharing, First Crush, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Psychic Bond, Repression, Soulmates, empathic environment - Freeform, first everything really, kind of, meeting as children, reckless use of Ogden Nash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-08-14 04:30:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16485959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: The first time they meet, as kids, it's on a playground.The second time they meet, it's in his dreams.





	1. Once (Or Twice) Upon A Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This one came out of the discord, and the 'this makes everything 1000% better' headcanon that Jack and Gil share a psychic bond... one that Jack is completely unaware of for years.

_This is my dream,_   
  _It is my own dream,_   
  _I dreamt it._   
  _I dreamt that my hair was kempt._   
  _Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it._

-Ogden Nash

 

 

    His mother had turned him loose at the park, with the children of her friends, but Gil didn’t really have a place with them, or with any of the other kids out playing. Joining in with kids his own age, it was deemed unfair having him on a team because he was the biggest. Older kids wouldn’t let him play because he was too clumsy for their more organized team sports. He doesn’t mind playing on his own, really, but it’s lonely when that’s how it always seems to go.

 

    He’d hurt himself, of course he had, it always seems to happen one way or another. He hasn’t grown into his new height yet, he’s not used to the length of his limbs or how to move his body. Moved to the little concrete ledge between grass and sand to sit and take stock of himself, to struggle not to cry. He’s a little too old to cry over a little scrape, he thinks, but it _hurts_ and he’s _alone_ , it’s not as if there’s anyone to impress with a lack of tears…

 

    “Are you okay?”

 

    Gil looks up, at the touch of a hand to his shoulder, and into a concerned face looming close to his own. A skinny boy his own age, bandana tied around his head, dark curls sticking out. Big brown eyes and an expectant pout. A sense of real empathy and it floods Gil’s whole _being_. He doesn’t know how to describe it, exactly, but he feels better.

 

    “I just scraped my leg up a little, that’s all.” He sniffs, nodding. “It’s okay, it happens all the time.”

 

    The boy has a stick in his other hand, but he drops it, fumbling with his bandanna, pulling it off first before tearing at the knot. He moves to crouch in front of Gil, face serious as he uses the bandana to brush away the sand sticking to the angry red scrape. He then ties it around Gil’s knee, standing up once he’s satisfied with the job he’s done of it.

 

    “Don’t you need this?”

 

    “Not really.” He shrugs. “I was using it to be a pirate, but nobody else wants to do pirates anymore. They’re all fighting over who gets to be Daniel Boone. Anyway they’ll only make me be the bad guy.”

 

    “I don’t think you make a very good bad guy.” Gil says, looking at his knee.

 

    “I don’t mind when it’s pirates. We’re all just pirates anyway, there’s no good guys and bad guys, you just run around and climb the masts and have swordfights. What about your friends?”

 

    “Oh. I don’t know… it’s not fair for me to be on a team, on account of I’m taller than everyone? And they’re doing something with teams now.”

 

    “Oh.” The boy says. He looks at Gil for a long moment, and then he catches himself staring and he runs away without another word.

 

    Gil doesn’t see him again. His mother doesn’t ask about where the bandana comes from, when she collects him to go home, and when he points out that he’d hurt himself, she cleans it and puts a real bandage there, and kisses it better, but she still doesn’t question the makeshift bandage he’d come home with.

 

    Gil washes it in the sink, and wrings it out, and he makes a clothesline out of his bedframe and a jump rope so that he can hang it up to dry.

 

    He looks up at it, when he goes to bed that night, still hanging there, probably dry. He could take it back with him to the park again. He could see the boy again and give it back sometime.

 

    He sees him again in his dream, sitting in the ruins of a castle on a cliff. He knows he’s real, though he doesn’t know how he knows. The how isn’t so important.

 

    “Hi!” Gil calls, scrambling over the ruins. He doesn’t know if the castle is his dream or the other boy’s, but it’s neat. The kind of place it would be fun to explore and play through. Gil isn’t nearly as clumsy in dreams. A little bit coltish, but in command of himself. More importantly, he knows how dreams work. He can’t fall or be hurt because it’s all in his head, can just be what he imagines.

 

    The boy stands up, startled, but after a moment he smiles and climbs up on the low, crumbling wall, carefully walking along it to reach Gil.

 

    “Hi.” He greets.

 

    “Are you in my dream or am I in yours?”

 

    “Oh… I don’t know.” The boy frowns, confused. “I guess… this is a dream, that, that makes sense. Because I don’t know how I got here or where my parents are, or where we’re at. It doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever been. Maybe like someplace in books.”

 

    “Thanks, for earlier. I washed your bandana.” Gil says. “I’ll take it with me in case… So I can give it back next time we see each other.”

 

    “Next time.” He smiles. “Yeah, okay, if there’s a next time.”

 

    Gil hops down from the wall, and the boy climbs down after him, follows him out to the cliffside.

 

    “Do you want to fly? I bet we could get all the way to whatever’s on the other side.” He points. There’s a sea below them, and some mist-shrouded island.

 

    “I’ve never flown before… I don’t think I can.”

 

    “It’s a dream. You can do anything.” Gil holds out his hand. “I’ll show you how. You just have to know you’re dreaming and that you can control everything happening inside your own head. But if you’re afraid you can’t, then you can hold onto me and I won’t let you fall.”

 

    “Do we think happy thoughts, or…?”

 

    He laughs. “You can if you want. I think flying’s happy enough on its own.”

 

    “You’ve done this before?” He frowns skeptically, but he takes Gil’s hand. “You won’t let me fall?”

 

    “Really really. Helps if you get a running start.”

 

    “... I’m going to die.”

 

    “No you won’t. The worst thing that can happen to you is you wake up. But I hope you don’t, because we’ll fly, really! And it’s so fun!”

 

    They give up on the running start after a couple steps prove they can’t keep time and have it feel natural, with the height difference between them, but then Gil has the other boy climb on his back, hooks his arms under the boy’s knees and just takes off running for the cliff, and the boy screams a little when they take off, but then they’re just flying.

 

    He shows off a little, because he’s never had anyone to show off for, not at this, not at any of the things he does in his dreams. And it feels good, hearing laughter instead, feels good when the boy trusts himself to let go and try on his own, though he shifts to holding onto Gil’s hand instead of breaking away on his own.

 

    He’s still holding Gil’s hand when he starts fading away, and Gil realizes he must be waking up.

 

    “Hey, wait, what’s your name?” Gil shouts, but it’s too late.

 

    He’s awake himself before he can reach the island they’d been making for.

 

\---

 

    When the subject of dreams comes up, with other kids, no one’s dreams are ever like Gil’s. Other guy have flying dreams, but they can’t control them, or they don’t know it’s a dream until they wake up, and no one believes you can meet someone else having the same dream at the same time, or not with any real conviction. Even Billy who believes in aliens doesn’t really think it sounds real. And Gil only has one experience he can point to.

 

    The subject comes up now and then anyway, as the years go by, and Gil stops talking about Dream Boy, though he still takes the bandana with him whenever he goes by the park. And most of the guys dream about girls now, but Gil’s never dreamed about kissing a girl. Girls don’t much show up in his dreams for any reason. The school librarian did once, and one time he had a dream where Richard Chamberlain was his doctor like on TV, and another time he thinks Snow White was trying to kill him in just about the weirdest nightmare he ever had, but most of the time his dreams are empty and it’s just him exploring someplace exciting alone.

 

    Tonight’s dream follows that pattern. He’s been making his way through the jungle, hearing unseen birds and monkeys and things, and all he knows about the dream is that he’s looking for a treasure and when he finds it it will change his entire life. Maybe in a ruined temple or a palace overgrown with tree roots, or something cool like that. And then the trees open up and there’s a sloping hill down to a clearing, and that’s where he sees _him_.

 

    “It’s you!” Gil cries, racing down the hill. It’s been three years-- the boy is taller now, almost his height. The same skinny limbs and curly hair. The same inexplicable aura of warmth. “How did you find me again?”

 

    “I don’t know.” The boy laughs as Gil skids to a stop, catching him by the arm-- he’d need to be caught, out in the world, but he doesn’t mind being caught when he doesn’t need it, it feels friendly. “Are you real? You’re not just a dream, you’re real but this is a dream?”

 

    Gil nods emphatically. “I’m real. And you are! And-- Wow! I’ve been looking for you. At the park also, not just in my dreams, but also in my dreams. But mostly in, at the park? Because I still have your bandana!”

 

    “You do?” He smiles, hand floating up to his mouth. “Oh… You-- you could just keep it. I don’t really need it anymore. But thanks, for trying.”

 

    “Not a lot of call for pirates anymore?”

 

    “Nah.”

 

    “That’s a shame.”

 

    “I guess. Anyway, I’m too old to be a pirate, I’m kind of a man now. Since yesterday, anyway.”

 

    “Oh. Did you get a job?”

 

    “No.” He laughs, and ducks his head, running a hand over his hair. “My bar mitzvah.”

 

    “Oh. I think if you’re Lutheran you just become a man when you like drinking coffee.”

 

    “Do you like drinking coffee?” The boy asks, tilting his head to the side.

 

    Gil makes a face. “No.”

 

    “Well that’s okay.” He laughs again and pats Gil’s arm. “Just keep being a kid a little bit longer.”

 

    “I’m Gil. That is-- I didn’t-- Before, we…”

 

    “Jack.”

 

    “Jack.” Gil smiles. He holds his hand out, and Jack takes it. “Do you want to go exploring?”

 

    “Okay.”

 

    The jungle rises around them, and Gil pushes back branches, trusts them not to snap back in his face. When the going is treacherous, they hang onto each other, but the ground rises to meet Gil’s feet when it needs to, keeping him from stumbling.

 

    Jack sees the panther first, yanks Gil back before he can take another step.

 

    “What?” Gil asks, though he makes no protest at being pushed behind Jack.

 

    “A panther…” He says, his voice quivering, his arm thrown out in front of Gil.

 

    “What?” Gil looks through the trees for it.

 

    “A panther… is like a leopard…” Jack whispers, though before Gil can protest that he knows what a panther _is_ , Jack continues on. “Except, it hasn’t been peppered. Uhh…  If you sh-should see a panther crouch, prepare to-- prepare to say ouch. Better yet, if called by a panther, don’t anther.”

 

    Gil laughs, sliding his arm around Jack’s shoulders. “That’s good.”

 

    “It’s Ogden Nash.” Jack swallows. “I thought I would be less nervous if I could remember it all. I don’t know why I thought that. I’m actually very nervous.”

 

    “I’m nervous all the time when I’m awake, it’s okay.”

 

    “I’ve never met a panther when I was awake.”

 

    “He’s going to be friendly.” Gil says, with some authority. “This isn’t a nightmare, it’s a dream. A good dream. So all the animals will be friendly. And we could pet them or ride on them or anything. And it’s safe.”

 

    “But how do you _know_?”

 

    “Because I said it out loud and it’s my dream, or half of it is, so… it’s my rules.”

 

    “What if he’s from my half?”

 

    “Well then _you_ tell him to be nice.”

 

    “Good, good kitty.” Jack stammers, his back pressed close against Gil’s front, his arms thrown wide. “Good kitty, that’s, yeah, okay, you… you just… st-stay there, kitty, that’s good…”

 

    Gil feels _warm_. The kind of warm he thinks you feel in dreams about girls, except none of the other guys actually talk to real girls in their dreams and Jack is a real boy. At least the guys talk about liking girls even outside of dreams and Gil’s never done that, either. He doesn’t know if he likes Jack or not. No one’s ever talked about how you know if you like a boy-- well, not to him. Maybe girls talk about that kind of thing to each other.

 

    It figures Gil _would_ like a boy, because he knows you’re not supposed to, but it seems harmless when he hardly even knows what it is to like someone at all. And he does a lot of things he’s not supposed to that are harmless, mostly he’s just clumsy. Wanting to kiss them, he guesses, is how you know you like someone, and the guys he knows are torn on whether they want to kiss girls or not still, but some of the guys say they do and Gil doesn’t tell them it’s gross even though he thinks it would be. Davey pours milk and cola into the same glass sometimes and he thinks that’s gross but it’s not any of his business what Davey puts in his mouth, so he figures it’s not any of his business what he wants to put his mouth on, either. Davey believes in ghosts but not aliens and he never told Gil Jack couldn’t be real, just that he’d never had any kind of a dream with a real person in it and it sounded like something you believe in when you’re a kid, and he’s nicer than a lot of guys, but Gil doesn’t think about kissing him, either.

 

    It would be weird kissing Davey because even though they’re not related, they’ve known each other longer than Gil can remember and other people think they look like brothers, just because Davey’s a little tall and he’s got blond hair and blue eyes, too, but they don’t look much alike past that. It’s just that he’s known him forever and he thinks it’s hard to want to kiss someone you once saw eat three bugs.

 

    He’s not thinking about the panther much at all, just idly watching it as it lies down, regarding them with the same lazy half-interest as a neighborhood cat. He’s trying to figure out if he likes Jack, whose curls tickle his nose, and Gil doesn’t know if he smells what Jack’s hair really smells like or if he only smells something his dream made up. Smells and tastes are always weird in his dreams, though.

 

    He’s still not sure what his opinion is on kissing. He thinks it’s kind of gross when it happens in movies and on TV and it’s definitely gross if his parents do it, but he wants to be in love someday anyway, and get married and live in a house and on weekends they would make pancakes and maybe he’d like being kissed on the cheek when he left for work. He’ll probably like all kinds of kissing when he’s grown up. By the time he likes coffee, for sure. But not with girls. He doesn’t want to share his house with a girl or sleep in the same room with one.

 

    “Hey, Jack?” He whispers.

 

    “Yeah?”

 

    “If you’re a man now does that mean you don’t think kissing is gross anymore? Like girls and stuff?”

 

    “Gil, there’s a man-eating panther staring us down right now, and you want to know if I think girls are gross?”

 

    “Well he can’t hurt us! And he doesn’t want to, see? And-- Yeah.”

 

    “I don’t think girls are gross, I think girls are nice.”

 

    “Yeah, but… can’t they be both? I mean I think girls are nice, but I wouldn’t want to kiss one.”

 

    Jack laughs, but it’s a little bit hysterical. “Okay. They can be both, then. Why are you asking me?”

 

    “I dunno. None of the guys in my class are men yet, I don’t think. But some of them want to kiss girls and some of them think girls are gross. I don’t think girls are gross, just their mouths I guess.” Gil steps around Jack, walking up to the panther.

 

    Jack lets out a strangled little scream and grabs for him, as Gil holds a hand out for the panther to sniff. It does, once, and then it ignores him in favor of flopping down for a nap among the underbrush.

 

    “I guess we can’t ride it.” He says, turning back to Jack. “So we might as well go.”

 

    “What if he’d bit your arm off?!”

 

    “Why would he go and do a thing like that?” Gil blinks, but he shrugs the moment off and grabs for Jack’s arm to drag him away from the napping panther and on towards adventure. “Anyway, I’d just wake up then probably. I’ve never dreamed anything really bad happening to me. I was on the run from Snow White once but she never caught up to me. I don’t have nightmares much, though, just dreams like this. Except usually you’re not here. Is there a girl you want to kiss, at your school?”

 

    “I dunno. Not really. I mean I like girls! I definitely like girls. But I don’t think there’s much point wanting to kiss girls until you’re old enough to go on dates, right? So I guess I probably won’t think about kissing until I can drive. If you can drive, girls will want to kiss you.”

 

    “Oh.” Gil frowns. He’d been looking forward to learning how to drive, vaguely, but now he has to rethink that.

 

    “So when I’m older and I can drive I guess I’ll kiss girls all the time. Or, I mean, one girl.” Jack hops up on a large tree root, arms outstretched as he walks along it. “Probably. You’ll like girls enough when you’re older.”

 

    “What if I don’t?”

 

    “You will. Everyone does.”

 

    “What if I like boys?” Gil asks, and he doesn’t think he’d be brave enough to in the waking world, to ask anyone. His voice is shaky enough here in the dream where he’s confident about so many things he still isn’t in the real world.

 

    Jack falls off the tree root and into the brush, and Gil yelps and rushes to help him up.

 

    “Oww…” Jack moans, and he bats at Gil’s hands when he tries to check him for injuries. Well, not that they’d be real injuries anyway. Gil picks leaves off of Jack’s shirt, and Jack allows that, though he stares at him with wide eyes and pursed lips. “What do you mean what if you like boys? That’s not-- Boys don’t-- You can’t like boys, you have to like girls.”

 

    “I’m never going to like girls.”

 

    “You will, though.” Jack says, and he seems worried, scared even, except he isn’t scared of Gil. He isn’t scared of Gil liking boys and touching him to pick leaves off his shirt and out of his hair, he’s scared of… Gil liking boys and getting in trouble?

 

    “Maybe I won’t like anyone.” Gil shrugs. He thinks he likes Jack enough to kiss him. Well, enough to kiss him on the cheek.

 

    “It’s a, it’s like a rule, Gil, we have to-- you have to. You will when you’re older. Okay?” Jack grabs his wrist. “Don’t-- don’t talk to anybody else about this, okay? Don’t tell anybody else, they-- they might get mad. Okay?”

 

    “Okay. You’re not mad, are you?”

 

    Jack shakes his head. “No, I’m not mad. When someone asks you, you say you like girls, and then you can say you don’t like any one girl right now. And make up a girl you used to like but you don’t like anymore, so they know you really do--”

 

    “But I really don’t.”

 

    “But you have to _lie_ about it. Understand? So you say ‘well I used to like Rachel from English but I don’t like her anymore’ and people will leave you alone. Okay?” He squeezes tighter, and Gil nods. “Good. Just… lie, okay?”

 

    “I’m not a very good liar. I mean, okay. I will.”

 

    His stomach feels weird and he doesn’t feel like he’s even supposed to be looking for something anymore, but Jack nods, with a tight, satisfied smile, and squeezes Gil’s wrist one more time before his hand slips down, before it brushes across Gil’s as he lets go. Gil feels like he’s run ten miles and drank too much water and now he’s dizzy and hot and his insides slosh around when he moves and everything else is all either too tight or too wobbly.

 

    “What?” Jack says, and leans in, wide dark eyes burning into Gil’s, warm breath fanning across his face, and this is like the dream where Richard Chamberlain was his doctor, sort of, except he has his shirt on and Jack doesn’t have one of those little lights shining in his eyes, he’s just leaning in close to stare into them, because he’s concerned. Because he’s nice. Because Gil must look like there’s something wrong, except there’s nothing really wrong-wrong, only he kind of feels like it must be morning because he has to go to the bathroom, so he’ll wake up soon and they’ll never find whatever he was looking for, so it’s a good thing that isn’t so important now, but it’s disappointing to think he’ll wake up without ever finding the treasure, and it’s disappointing to think he’ll only have to go to school and he won’t see Jack and Jack won’t kind of almost sort of hold his hand for half a second or half a half-second, and he’d like for that to happen again but it feels like the dream must be over soon so he can get up in the morning, and that’s all, but Jack is so close and so expectant and Gil doesn’t really know what to say because it’s honestly so stupid, probably, it...

 

    _Damn_. This _is_ like the dream where Richard Chamberlain was his doctor. Gil shakes his head, takes a stumbling step backwards and falls onto his ass. Except he doesn’t fall onto his ass at all, he falls into his bed, into being awake. He can only really hope that he blinked out of their dream before completely embarrassing himself. Maybe he did.

 

    He doesn’t know if he wants to kiss Jack but he thinks maybe this means he does like him.

 

    He fumbles around his nightstand, and his hand closes around the bandana, Jack’s bandana. Well… he’d said Gil could keep it. He puts it back in the drawer and abandons the half-formed thought that he would find something he needed there.


	2. A Teenager In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gil learns a little something about control.
> 
> Jack learns he has none.

_They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful,_

_well, today I feel euphorian,_

_Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetitite of a_

_Victorian._

_Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,_

_Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle_

_any swashes?_

_This is my euphorian day_

-Ogden Nash

 

    It’s really unfair, Gil thinks, that he can do just about anything in his dreams except _this_. It should be so easy, it’s not even like flying. He could fly easy, but he’s not going to _now_. He focused real hard, as hard as he could, and all he could get back were his shoes and his shirt, and his shirt’s too short to pull down to cover everything, and he’s at _school_.

 

    Well, sort of. It’s mostly his school, except sometimes there are parts of it that aren’t at all, that are like some high school out of a movie maybe or one he imagined reading a book. Still, even if it’s not completely his school and even if he knows the kids in all the classrooms are constructs of his mind, he doesn’t want them to see him naked, it’s still embarrassing even in a dream. And any minute now the bell could ring and they’d all come streaming out and here he is in a uniform shirt that won’t pull down far enough in the back and won’t stay together in the front past where the buttons end.

 

    He has to _find_ his clothes. That’s the rule for this sort of dream. Except some of his clothes could be in classrooms. But he knows where to start. Something’s always up the flagpole.

 

    The flagpole isn’t where it’s supposed to be, but he finds it anyway, and he brings down his underwear, only when he gets them, they’re not even his. He contemplates putting them on anyway, just in case the bell rings and everyone comes rushing out, but he doesn’t. They could be anyone’s.

 

    The library. That was a likely place. He almost always found something there. And there was only ever even a librarian once.

 

    The hedge around the side of the library rustles, and Gil jumps, then goes still. He holds one hand in front of himself, and holds the underwear out towards the hedge with the other.

 

    “Is this yours?” He asks, edging closer. A hand shoots out, a big hand on a slender arm, softly just-tan. Tan next to Gil, certainly, but then who isn’t?

 

    A boy emerges from behind the hedge wearing the underwear and nothing else, and Gil sucks in a breath. The curly hair and the wide, brown eyes, and--

 

    He’s so _tall_ now, he’s taller without his shoes than Gil is with his, though not by very much. He’s so _tall_ , and he has a little beauty mark on his chin that he didn’t have three years ago, why only every three years? Gil thinks he could die if he has to wait another three years to see him.

 

    He’s slender and wiry and he has hair on his chest, a little, and his lips didn’t used to look like that, Gil’s sure, or he wasn’t ready to notice lips then, anyway, but he notices lips now, he notices Jack’s lips.

 

    “Hi, Jack.” He squeaks.

 

    “Gil? Oh--” Jack looks down for half a second and quickly looks up, past Gil entirely, up at the clouds. “Are you real? You’re real. Oh…”

 

    “Wanna help me look for the rest of our clothes? I tried to imagine I had them, but all I got was my shoes and my shirt.”

 

    “I wouldn’t mind if you could imagine me my shoes and shirt.”

 

    “I don’t know if I can.”

 

    “You got yours.”

 

    “Yeah, but I’ve never imagined another guy with his clothes on. I mean-- Not like-- Ohh--”

 

    “Not like in a dream. I mean-- not like, to make something happen to someone else, you mean.” Jack says, and Gil nods. “Well, okay, let’s look I guess. Do you have this dream a lot?”

 

    “I didn’t before but yeah. Since sixth grade. Don’t you?”

 

    “Usually I only find out I’m naked when I’m in the middle of presenting something to the whole class, and then Missy Johnson points and laughs and then everyone laughs.”

 

    “Missy Johnson sounds mean.” Gil frowns. Jack has to open the library door for him, so that he can preserve his modesty, but it’s all quiet and empty inside. They could split up to search the stacks for missing articles of clothing, but they go together instead. It just feels natural to.

 

    “She’s the worst. She and her brother made me the witch for a class play when we were kids and, um… I dunno. We were kids, but like… she teased me about it for years. Even though it wasn’t really anything I did or said or anything. My parents said I wasn’t supposed to hang around with them after that, if-- I mean, you know, if they were going to be assholes. Well my mom didn’t say ‘assholes’. She just said not to talk to the Johnson kids. But she can’t control who’s in classes with who, um, or, you know. So Missy still bothers me at school, and she stopped about the class play a few years ago except then last year she said, she said, hey, everyone, remember when Jack Harrison, uh, when he had to wear a dress for Mrs. Smith’s class play? Remember we pushed Jack-- Well. It’s stupid.”

 

    “They made you wear a dress and then they pushed you because of it?”

 

    “They didn’t push me ‘cause I was wearing a dress.” Jack shakes his head. “They just pushed me ‘cause-- they used to do that sometimes. If Missy said to then anybody would. Most kids, um, you know. Most kids weren’t really mean or anything, but if Missy said to, a lot of kids would, ‘cause if you didn’t, she’d pick on you next. And she always knew… she always knows the worst stuff to say. And we made this cardboard set and she and her brother pushed me-- And the whole, the whole thing fell over. And kids mostly laughed and some of the grown-ups-- some of the parents laughed, but they thought that was part of the play, it wasn’t-- I mean parents don’t think it’s funny when kids push each other, I don’t think. Maybe Missy’s parents do. But mostly they just thought it was the show. But my parents were mad. But that was, we were, you know. That was eight years ago, I’m not mad about it. I hardly remember it, I only remember how mad my parents were later. I’m only mad then she tried to get everyone laughing at me again about something we all did when we were kids that wasn’t even my idea to do. Anyway her script was bad, Mrs. Smith put her in charge and her whole play was really dumb, it was a baby play even then, like… even when we were eight it was… I just wanted to do something in the class play, they should have made one of the girls the witch only Missy said, you know, make Jack do it. And, um, I was the only kid in class who was, I mean, not-- I mean, I had friends, but not in my class, I had weekend friends. There were lots of us! If they were around on weekends. But, um… the kids I was with in the park that time, those were school kids, my, um, my other friends were… everyone had piano lessons and swimming lessons and baseball lessons-- baseball practice. So it was just me. I mean I had piano lessons. But I got out first and the others were after me. That’s why-- that’s why, if it seemed like I didn’t have friends? That’s why. Sorry, I talk a lot sometimes when I’m nervous and I’m nervous when I’m in my underwear.”

 

    “Oh. So am I.” Gil nods. “I’m even more nervous when I’m not in my underwear.”

 

    Jack laughs. “You don’t seem nervous. Not much, I mean.”

 

    “Well… I’ve done this before.”

 

    “You’re never nervous about anything. Not when I see you. Not hardly. You weren’t even nervous awake, when we were kids, when you got hurt.”

 

    “Well, I’d done that before, too.”

 

    “You’re--” He starts and then stops himself hard, biting his lip. Gil wonders what biting Jack’s lip would feel like, but he doesn’t think he’d like to bite it, exactly, not hard or anything, he just wants to know how it tastes and what it would be like to have his mouth around Jack’s mouth in a meaningful capacity and maybe it would be okay if it was wet, a little. He turns away before Jack shakes himself out of the brief tongue-tied daze. “You’re funny. I mean I guess people tell you that…”

 

    “No.” Gil smiles, stealing another glance at Jack. “Not on purpose anyway. People tell me I’m funny-looking.”

 

    “You’re not.” Jack says quickly, and then he stops short again. “I mean, I don’t think so. You look like lots of guys, just taller. Or like… blonder. But people like that. Tall and blond and-- you know, that’s… I dunno, but, uh, not funny-looking. I don’t think.”

 

    “Well… I dunno about that.” Gil shrugs, but he’s grinning through the rest of their search through BIOGRAPHIES, where he finds his underwear wedged under a book about Abraham Lincoln.

 

    Jack politely moves to the next aisle over to allow Gil the privacy to get them on, before they move on together.

 

    “Are you in any clubs at your school?” He asks, as they cross into what must be a chunk of Jack’s school, butted up against his own. “I usually find things I’m looking for, um… There’s always something up the flagpole-- that’s where I found your shorts-- and something in the library, and then it’s the places I like the most. Or places I hate the most, sometimes, but… I’d rather check the best places first just in case I don’t need to go into metal shop or gym or anything.”

 

    “I’m on yearbook and the school paper.” Jack nods. “And debate team.”

 

    “I’m on the school paper!” Gil beams. “I figured… well, I might as well be. Since my dad wants to send me to college to study journalism. Since he thinks I should probably not be a complete dummy about it when I start working for him and all.”

 

    “Yeah?” Jack leans towards him slightly, and the feeling of being looked at so intently, so close… “You, um… you want to be a journalist when you-- After college?”

 

    “I guess I do. I mean… I guess I’m going to be. Probably not a very good one, it’s not a very good paper. But I mean it’s a job! And it puts food on the table! And it’s not-- it’s not like there’s anything _wrong_ with my dad’s paper! I mean it’s-- Kids tease me when they find out sometimes, I mean they used to. You know, asking if I really believe all that stuff. Bigfoot and aliens and-- and that stuff.”

 

    “Your dad owns one of those weird news tabloids?”

 

    “I mean I know he publishes stories about things that aren’t real! But that doesn’t mean everything is fake! I mean-- I mean you’re here with me, or I’m here with you, and we’re having the same dream, so some weird woo-woo stuff is real!”

 

    “You tell your dad you have, um… dreams with other people and stuff?” Jack asks, rubbing at his arm.

 

    Gil shakes his head. “No.”

 

    “Why?”

 

    “Dunno. Anyway, it isn’t other people, just us.”

 

    “Oh. Okay.” Jack bites his lip again.

 

    “Have you ever kissed anyone?” Gil blurts the question out before he can stop himself, he can’t help it, he’d looked over and there had been Jack and they were walking close enough he could see the little indents his teeth had left, and the sheen of saliva, and he’s just lucky that was the question he asked and not something else.

 

    “What?”

 

    “Um-- I just-- Have you ever kissed anyone? I just-- wondered.”

 

    “You can’t ask a guy if he’s kissed someone when you’re both not wearing pants.”

 

    “Why not?”

 

    Jack groans, like this is some kind of well-known rule or something that Gil should have been aware of. “Forget it. Yeah. I mean, kind of. A little. Hannah S., um-- there’s two, in my-- there’s two, anyway. S. But it was just a game of spin the bottle in her folks’ basement. They have a real nice basement, like a rec room, she, uh, she has parties sometimes. And her parents always knock, my parents would never knock if they had a bunch of kids in their basement. Well, my parents don’t have a basement, my parents, we live in an apartment, but I mean, they wouldn’t knock if I had girls in my room, they’d always be coming in checking on us. But uh, she just says, you know, like that we’re all good kids, and we are! But I don’t know anyone else whose parents knock. Anyway, it wasn’t like… we didn’t really want to kiss each other especially, we both would have rather kissed someone else so it was… really fast, it was over before you even really get to feel it. It wasn’t like necking or anything. Why-- have you?”

 

    Gil looks down, blushing. “No. I would, if-- if someone asked me. I mean, someone I wanted to… you know.”

 

    “You’ve got to ask her, usually.”

 

    His head snaps back up and he stares at Jack. Had he forgotten? Well… three years, he might have.

 

    “What?”

 

    “I don’t-- I don’t want to kiss any girls.” Gil forces the words out, though there’s not much power behind them. His knees feel very shaky all of a sudden.

 

    “Oh.” Jack says, and it’s barely a sound, just a breath. He looks at Gil a long moment, his expression unreadable-- blank, except for his eyes, which are the opposite of blank, if anything they’re too full, and Gil still doesn’t know what he’s looking for in them. Finally, Jack purses his lips and nods, once. “Then you’d better wait for someone to ask you. Just-- just so-- so you’d know he really-- I mean, if he’s like that, then… then it’s okay, I mean… Is your school big? You-- you probably aren’t the only guy, at least there… there could be other guys who are just curious, or who… who don’t care, and maybe they’d… Like if it was for _practice_ then it’s-- But you should wait for him to ask you.”

 

    “My school’s big enough I guess.”

 

    “My school’s big. No one there wants to kiss me.” Jack says.

 

    “Why not?”

 

    Jack laughs. “Really?”

 

    “Really. Why not?”

 

    “I dunno. Too tall--”

 

    “You said tall was good earlier.”

 

    “Yeah but not for kissing, not if you’re too tall and you have to bend halfway over to do it. Um… I dunno. Big nose.”

 

    “You know what they say about guys with big noses.” Gil shrugs, although he doesn’t. It’s feet, he thinks, actually, but he still doesn’t know what they supposedly say, only that he’s heard the ‘you know what they say’ and adults usually chuckle over it.

 

    Jack laughs and elbows at him, shaking his head. His cheeks are rosier and he ducks his head and his grin doesn’t leave him even when he goes back to talking about why he doesn’t get kissed more often. “Yeah, well. Because Missy Johnson says I’m untouchable.”

 

    “Oh. Well that’s… yeah, I can’t argue around that one.”

 

    Jack leads him to a classroom-- his pants are there right away, a pair of jeans draped there right in plain sight, and he wastes no time getting them on. Flares that don’t dust the ground on Jack the way they would on most.

 

    “Does your school not have uniforms?” Gil asks.

 

    “No. Does yours?”

 

    He nods. He never really thought about having an opinion on it-- he doesn’t care about fashion, the only real problem is that the blazer is too small on him, since slacks and shirts he can get in his size anywhere with a decent men’s department. But the blazer is just short enough to look stupid on him. He never bothers with it when he’s searching for his clothes in dreams.

 

    Jack looks good in jeans, though. Now that he has those, Gil doesn’t have to avoid looking at him so much. He still doesn’t have a shirt, but that’s fine, it’s not like with a girl, not that Gil would care to look if he was. He looks good without a shirt, though, too. He looks like he would be warm if Gil placed his hand at Jack’s waist, his skin smooth, he looks…

 

    “What?”

 

    “Nothing.” He coughs, turning away. “Just-- now I gotta find my pants, that’s all. It could be in math. That’s where chess club meets every other tuesday.”

 

    “You play chess?”

 

    There’s a touch of interest in Jack’s voice, and Gil’s face heats. He keeps his gaze down.

 

    “No. Not-- I’m not good at it. But if you join chess club then every other tuesday you can eat in the room and it’s quieter and the guys in chess club, I mean… I know they must think I’m a big dummy ‘cause I never learn to do any better and they’re all a lot better than me, but they’re still real nice guys and they never make fun of me for it. And they tell me I did a good job if I made a couple smart moves and lost anyway, which is about as good as I ever do.”

 

    And one of the guys in the club is cute. Gil doesn’t like him as much as he likes Jack. He’s never even had a regular old dream about him, much less met him in one. He has blue eyes, but darker than Gil’s are, and he has a mop of black hair, and he’s a little like Jack, almost as tall and skinny, with a kind of beaky nose. He’s got a crooked tooth and an okay kind of laugh. Of all the boys at Gil’s school maybe Gil likes him the best, though there’s a wiry blond boy who reads comic books and never says much and seems nice, and there’s a brown-haired, brown-eyed boy who’s a foot shorter than Gil is, or almost, but he’s really good at sports. Anyway, the three of them are all nice he guesses and if any of them wanted to kiss him he’d say yes, but he doesn’t feel the same about any of them as he feels when he thinks about Jack. He just sees them every day instead of every three years. But they don’t have Jack’s curls, or his complexion, or his smile-- or his beauty mark, which Gil likes, now that it’s there-- or just his way of being. None of them are ever cruel, but none of them ever came to his rescue like Jack did when they were kids.

 

    Well, maybe ‘rescue’ is a bit grand, but… still. Jack is special. Jack is his Dream Boy. He still has the bandana, he slept with it by his pillow three years.

 

    They find his classroom, and his pants, though the search continues for Jack’s shirt and shoes, and Gil imagines when they find those, the dream will be over. That’s usually as much as it really takes for things to peter out.

 

    He kind of doesn’t want to find Jack’s shirt, though he has the good grace to feel bad about the fact that it isn’t only about keeping the dream going.

 

    “I know where she put my shoes.” Jack groans, as they pass through another chunk of his school.

 

    “Who?”

 

    “Oh-- um. The dream, I guess.” He ducks his head.

 

    “The dream is a she?”

 

    “Well… usually when I dream about things going wrong it’s-- forget it, yeah, I mean… it could be.”

 

    They peer through the window, assuring themselves the room is empty. It’s the home ec classroom, with a row of little kitchenettes and a row of neat little tables.

 

    Jack starts methodically going down the row, looking in the oven of each, until he finds a pair of dirty white tennis shoes. He plunks himself down at a table, grim-faced, and pulls them on.

 

    “How’d you know--?”

 

    “It was my history book, in real life. I mean, she didn’t do anything to it, except--”

 

    “Missy Johnson?”

 

    Jack nods. “She grabbed it out of my locker when I was putting my math stuff away and she took off running-- she didn’t get yelled at, either, but I did when I chased after her. Even though I needed that book! And it wasn’t funny. And she’s in advanced placement U.S. history and the first half of the year wasn’t so bad-- well, it was bad, because she’s always awful, but she didn’t steal my book or anything until last week. And she ran into the nearest empty room with an open door and then she just kind of…” He mimes lobbing something underhand. “Chucked it in there and giggled. She’s such an idiot sometimes but she’s in all my advanced classes, it’s really unfair. And there’s nothing you can do about a girl bully!”

 

    “Oh. I never thought of it like that. I’ve never had a girl bully, especially.” Gil says. The worst kid he knows is probably Gary, who likes shoving him around. Gary’s not a big guy, but then, Gil’s not a fighter. “At least girls don’t hit you though, right?”

 

    “No. Nobody tries to hit me. I mean… look at me.” Jack shrugs. “I’m six feet tall. Wait-- do guys hit you?”

 

    He frowns, reaching out to wrap his hand around Gil’s wrist.

 

    “Not like… punches or anything.” He says, and his chest feels tight and all too fast as he looks down at the way Jack’s hand folds around him, the soft olive tan against the white of his shirt cuff, how big his hand is… Not that Gil’s hands are small or his wrists are all that skinny, but even so, Jack’s hand looks so big, and yet he’s so gentle… He’s always been gentle. Careful. Thoughtful.

 

    “Okay. Well… well, good. I-- They shouldn’t. You’re… you’re a nice guy, they shouldn’t.”

 

    “They don’t.”

 

    Jack looks into his eyes a long moment before he nods, and his hold tightens just barely, just briefly, before his hand slips away.

 

    “Good.” He repeats. “I, uh… I can’t always be around to look after you when you get hurt, huh?”

 

    “I still-- I mean-- I get hurt a lot just on my own, it’s fine. It’s never real serious anyway. But… It’s nice you-- I mean, if we saw each other outside of all this, I’d-- You could look after me.”

 

    Jack laughs softly, getting back up to his feet. “Well… maybe someday we’ll see each other again. I mean-- outside of all this. And then I guess I will. I mean, if you needed-- I mean, I could.”

 

    “You’re sweet.”

 

    “Gil, you can’t call another guy sweet.” He turns away, wrapping his arms around himself.

 

    “Well, you’re nice, then.”

 

    “So’re you.”

 

    “You said. I mean-- thanks, I, I guess. But you _are_. I don’t know why I shouldn’t say it, it’s not like anyone else’d know I did. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

 

    “No, just-- just, you can’t, guys don’t call each other sweet. I’m not-- I’m just-- ‘Nice’ is fine.” Jack sighs. “Gil… I’m not around to look after you. So you gotta be able to tell me you’re safe. And you don’t go around-- you don’t go around getting in trouble with… with people who think you shouldn’t say stuff like that guys are sweet and you don’t want to kiss girls, you know? Because… I mean I don’t wanna have to worry about you, okay?”

 

    “Nobody knows about-- about that stuff.” Gil promises. He starts to reach for Jack, then pulls his hand back, blushing. “I don’t get in trouble, promise. Well, not for that, anyway.”

 

    “Okay. If… if you ever do-- then try real hard to find me, okay? If anyone ever hurts you, just… just try real hard to find me at night, and-- I don’t know. But-- Find me and tell me, and I’ll find you.”

 

    “Jack, I--”

 

    It all happens at once, Jack reaches for him and the school melts around them, and even though they never did find Jack’s shirt, Gil wakes up with a jolt. Maybe Jack is still in the dream, or maybe not. Gil doesn’t know.

 

    He wonders how he’d go about finding him, if he needed him. He always hopes he’ll see him again, but he’s never… he’s never concentrated on seeking him out, he doesn’t know how to begin. Could he?

 

    He starts trying, after that. He lies down each night, and he holds the bandana in his hand, and he closes his eyes, and he whispers Jack’s name.

 

    He tries saying other things, sometimes. He tries saying that they’ll find each other, out loud into his empty room, a declaration of intent. He tries everything he can think of, not that he can think of much.

 

    This time, it takes three months, not three years, before he finds Jack next. School again, half Jack’s and half Gil’s, but this time he’s fully dressed. He finds Jack in an empty classroom, lit by the hazy afternoon sunlight coming through dirty windows, finds him after having run up and down the halls looking when he recognized the buildings he’d only seen in the last shared dream, he tumbles in out of breath, landing himself in Jack’s arms.

 

    “Gil!”

 

    “Jack! I found you!”

 

    “Are you okay? Are you in trouble?” Jack frowns, making sure Gil’s feet are under him, holding onto his shoulders still.

 

    “Oh-- I don’t think so. I just-- I thought I’d better practice? Trying to find you? In case I ever… Or just-- just to see you?”

 

    Jack’s forehead smooths, and then creases all over again, but he smiles-- a smile so soft it’s hardly a smile at all, and no one’s ever looked at Gil like that. His grip on Gil’s shoulders softens, too, his hands sliding down to rest at his upper arms, big and warm.

 

    “I was… I was looking for, for something. I felt like I was here to find something. Do you… maybe wanna… look with me?”

 

    “Okay.” Gil nods, his hand drifting to Jack’s waist. “Um… unless maybe you were… I mean, do you know what you were looking for?”

 

    Jack shakes his head.

 

    “Do you think-- maybe-- could it be me?” He asks, sways forward a moment before jerking back. “Or-- maybe that’s stupid, sorry--”

 

    “It’s not stupid if you were calling me.” Jack shakes his hair again, though he lets go of Gil.

 

    “Oh. Well-- I was. I mean-- Gosh. It’s cool, though, isn’t it? I never knew I could-- and here you are! And-- Wow!” Gil grins, his hand coming back up to pluck absently at Jack’s beltloop.

 

    “Yeah. Wow.” Jack takes Gil’s forearm this time, his grip gentle, hips canting towards Gil at the slightest tug to his jeans.

 

    “Um, so… do you-- do you drive now?”

 

    “Yeah. Well, I _can_. I don’t get to much, but… I can, I know how, I’m good at it. Pretty good. Do you?”

 

    Gil shakes his head, face heating. “No. I’m, um… sometimes when I get really nervous I mix up right and left, and every time I get behind the wheel of a car, I get really nervous. I mean obviously I know-- I know what’s right and left!”

 

    “Yeah, okay, which one’s left?” Jack teases-- there’s nothing mean in it, when he does, his smile is warm and he’s so _close_ , and his hand slides slow down Gil’s arm towards his hand…

 

    “I don’t know, now I’m nervous!” He yelps. Jack laughs softly and squeezes his wrist, he’s _so_ close, and Gil has to think about writing his name out to be sure. “The one you’re not holding.”

 

    “You don’t really have to answer.” Jack blushes, letting go of him. “That wasn’t-- it wasn’t nice putting you on the spot, I’m sorry.”

 

    “Oh, that’s okay. You didn’t mean to be-- to not be nice. It’s… it’s dumb, I’m--”

 

    “You’re not.” He cuts Gil off, reaches up and places a hand on his shoulder, his left this time, now that he’s thinking about that. “You’re not _dumb_. You just get nervous. It’s okay.”

 

    “Well… most people think I’m…” Gil shrugs. “They don’t think I’m smart.”

 

    “So? You don’t have to be smart anyway, but that doesn’t make you dumb. I don’t think you’re dumb. I think you’re--” He stops, biting his lips, and Gil leans forward as Jack looks down. “I think you’re cool, I guess.”

 

    “Um… do you-- So, now that you drive, do you kiss a lot of girls?” Gil asks, gnawing at his own lip.

 

    “Nah, I don’t really care about that-- I mean, I-- I’m just… I never get the car and school’s more important anyway, than--” Jack lifts his head, his eyes meeting Gil’s, and for a moment he’s silent, mouth working. “Kissing.”

 

    “Yeah. I mean-- sure. I mean, I’ve never done it, but-- School, and… yeah. Sure. I mean… there’s plenty of time to… to do that. Kissing.”

 

    “I mean, I’ll probably care about it more later, when I-- Or if I--”

 

    “Practiced?”

 

    Gil’s breaths are coming too hard and quick and shallow, but Jack is just the same. And ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ starts playing, somewhere, and Gil doesn’t know if that’s him or if it’s Jack, and outside the windows where there used to be asphalt and brick, there are flowers too big to be real, pinks and reds and golds and greens tinting the light.

 

    “Yeah.” Jack whispers. “Maybe… maybe I just need, uh, practice.”

 

    Gil nods, and he feels like he could faint as Jack cups his cheek, his first kiss, his first _kiss_ , his Dream Boy, _oh_ …

 

    The first touch of Jack’s lips is softer than he could have dreamed if he were dreaming alone, he’s dreamed of kissing and never felt the full sensation of it. His stomach swirls and wobbles, and he throws his arms about Jack before they can separate, wants so desperately to hold onto the moment, and when he does, Jack dives right back in and kisses him again and this time, oh, this time it’s _wet_.

 

    Jack holds onto him, too, presses close to him, the same height as him, and he doesn’t kiss like he’s never had any practice, or maybe Gil just wouldn’t know any better, but he likes being kissed by Jack.

 

    There’s a joyous swooping inside of him, tugging all his insides out of place, filling him with something liquid and warm and golden. He’s honey and sunshine because Jack has kissed him.

 

    He’s not sure who moans first, only that they both do, a little, tiny shivering sounds of _want_ , and no one has ever _wanted_ Gil before, the idea that Jack might is overwhelming.

 

    Jack leaps out of his arms at it, though, and Gil can’t not let him. He watches, helpless and confused, as Jack paces the dim classroom, still lit through the sun-drenched flowers of outside, still filled with soft music, even as Jack drags his hands through his curls in agitation.

 

    “I shouldn’t have done that.”

 

    “It’s okay with me.” Gil promises.

 

    “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that…” Jack moans, like he hasn’t heard him, or like it doesn’t matter. “I can’t believe I-- Gil, we can’t-- We can’t again. We can’t.”

 

    Gil’s shoulders droop. “Was it bad?”

 

    “No. It’s just-- You’re a guy. We can’t, you know?”

 

    “Well… okay, I mean, Jack, if you don’t want to--”

 

    “It doesn’t matter what I want, Gil-- I mean, no, of course I-- You don’t understand.”

 

    “I guess I don’t. I wouldn’t make you if you didn’t like it or anything.” He sits on a desk, his legs too long to kick freely, though he tries to, shoes skidding against the tile with a squeak.

 

    “It’s not about if I liked it.” Jack flings himself down into a chair. It tilts back, and Gil has to scramble to grab for his flailing arm before he can fall back and crack his head against the floor.

 

    He pulls himself up by their joined hands, and throws his arms around Gil, and kisses him again.

 

    “Mm-- oh! Jack!” Gil gasps, between kisses. “I thought-- we couldn’t? Oh-- no, nevermind, please-- couldn’t we?”

 

    “We can’t… not ever…” Jack pants against his ear, pressed cheek to cheek, chest heaving against Gil’s. “Not-- not in the real world. But this isn’t real, right?”

 

    “Not real how?”

 

    “Not real-- Not _real_! Not-- Not in the real world! So it doesn’t count, right? No one-- no one can ever know, if we don’t tell them, and we _won’t_ tell them. So it’s safe, we can-- we can practice. If it’s here, like this.”

 

    Gil nods, reaching up to run his fingers gently through Jack’s hair. “Oh. That kind of not real. O-okay. But-- if… if we met again, out in the world, you really mean we couldn’t?”

 

    “No. Not ever, not like that. Not-- if we got caught… Gil…”

 

    Jack pulls back, cupping Gil’s cheek, fixing him with the softest, saddest look in his wide, dark eyes.

 

    “Not ever?” Gil asks.

 

    “You’re a nice boy, Gil. And nice boys like you… you shouldn’t get in the kind of trouble you’d get in, if-- with me, or-- And I’m not-- I can’t be-- I can’t be, okay? I’m not like you. I’m not brave.”

 

    “You think I’m brave?” Gil’s heart swells in spite of the rejection.

 

    “You throw yourself off cliffs and pet panthers and… and kiss boys. I don’t know what’s scarier. Of course I think you’re brave. I mean-- don’t you?”

 

    He shakes his head. “Not most of the time.”

 

    “Well I think you are. But I’m not. And I don’t-- I can’t-- kiss boys.”

 

    “I think you’re brave.” Gil whispers. “You let me take you flying with me. You put yourself between me and the panther. And you-- you did kiss me.”

 

    “Yeah, but… in a dream. Not… I can’t. It would be so bad if we ever… This is just practice. Just here, tonight, but… it can’t be real. You understand?”

 

    “No.” He shrugs. “But if that’s what you want, that’s… it’s your life. Dreams… dreams are real enough for me, I guess.”

 

    “I should go.” Jack sighs.

 

    “You don’t have to.”

 

    “No, I’d better. I-- You can-- you can find me again, okay? I-- I won’t be mad or anything, if you… I don’t-- But I need to go for now.”

 

    Jack starts for the door, but he turns back, two long strides put him in Gil’s arms again, and he whispers a goodbye against his lips.

 

    Gil wakes up, hot and cold all at once and missing him, and feeling a distinct sort of discomfort he hasn’t woken up to in a year or so. He doesn't know if he should laugh or cry or what. He should get up and shower.

 

    His first kiss... wow.

 


	3. So I Don't Have to Dream Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know what to say about this chapter except... wow, Gil, such a naif.

_We’d free the incarcerate race of man_

_That such a doom endures_

_Could only you unlock my skull,_

_Or I creep into yours._

-Ogden Nash

 

    For a while, Gil doesn’t try to look for Jack again. His insides squirm every time he thinks of it. The kiss, the talk they’d had about how they couldn’t really, and maybe if they met in dreams again they would practice some more, because Jack had said that was safe, and okay…

 

    Gil cares a lot about his personal safety, in the waking world, of course he does. He’s downright agitated over it, given his propensity for disaster. But he doesn’t want to be afraid of falling in love. He doesn’t want to be afraid of sharing his future with someone, a boy, a boy he feels things for. He doesn’t want to be afraid of kisses, of… of having a home and a bed and a life with someone like Jack. Not now, sure, but someday.

 

    He just doesn’t understand Jack. Does he like girls mostly but also like Gil? Or does he not like boys at all but practice is practice and that’s okay to him? Or does he like boys the same as Gil only he won’t let himself?

 

    It’s confusing, and it’s a little sad, because Gil would like to be able to go steady, even if they can only do it in dreams. And he thinks even if Jack doesn’t mostly like boys or only like boys, he does like Gil back. Even if Gil is the only boy he likes, he thinks he does.

 

    He starts looking for him again, though he can’t seem to summon up the half-and-half school. He still searches for Jack in all his other adventure dreams. He doesn’t find him exploring the pyramids, or hiking in the mountains, or diving through the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis-- although he does find mummies, an avalanche, and a shark so horrifying it shows up in his next three dreams even though he’s nowhere near the water in those.

 

    He goes a week without dreaming anything remarkable at all, but he braces himself for the shark again when he finds he’s on a boat. An old-timey sailing ship, and this time there are people populating the dream, sailors and other passengers, and a stuffy old captain he thinks must be from a movie remembered only by his subconscious. A snotty girl dressed as fancy as he is, who he avoids, but none of the sailors will talk to him at all except to say ‘yes your grace’ and then hurry away, and there’s only so much to explore, because whenever he tries to see something cool, the captain appears out of nowhere to tell him it isn’t for a man of his position, whatever that is, so it’s all very boring except for the fear of sharks. Basking shark, that was the kind it had been, he found a book where he could look up what type and immediately regretted having done so when he saw the picture. How he knew what one was to dream about, he doesn’t know, he must have seen the book before and blocked the awful thing from his memory. It made the great white shark look downright cute, Gil thought, it was awful. A great white shark would have listened to him and been nice to him, he thinks. This was the first time he’d ever dreamt an animal that wouldn’t be friendly, or at least civil!

 

    He leans against the ship’s railing and hopes for an island to explore next, something interesting and hopefully not a shark with an enormous mouth and a short temper. Anything but boredom and basking sharks!

 

    Then there’s a thunderous boom, and the whole ship rocks, and Gil wishes he had maybe made some further clarifications, as he whirls around to see a huge black freighter, raising a flag with a skull over a pair of crossed sabers. Okay. Well. This counts as interesting, anyway, but Gil finds himself missing boredom something fierce as the ship pulls up alongside the one he’s on, as pirates swing across the gulf between on ropes, and swords clash and gunsmoke billows, and things just generally become the opposite of boring while Gil hides behind a bunch of barrels.

 

    Of course, he’s the ‘your grace’ of things, whatever that means, so someone yanks him out by the back of his coat, and they tie him up and shout a lot at each other about what to do with him, and they have the girl as well. She’s taken up ahead of him onto the pirate ship to be brought before the captain, but by the time they’ve dragged Gil out across the gangplank laid between the two ships, she doesn’t really seem to exist anymore. It’s just the pirates, their captain on the upper deck, silhouetted against the brilliant sun, and Gil down on the lower deck, forced down to his knees.

 

    He could fly, of course… if they wanted him to walk the plank, he’d just do that. Otherwise he knows it’s straight into the mouth of a basking shark. He just _knows_ it. But he could still fly, couldn’t he? He hasn’t had a flying dream in a while, but he still knows _how_. And he knows that he’ll just wake up if he’s dropped into a shark’s mouth and all, but he still doesn’t want it to happen.

 

    The captain swings down to the lower deck, and Gil cringes as he lands with a thud, slowly looking up, waiting to hear he’s useless or the pirates are ruthless, or something else that adds up to his being cast overboard to maybe be eaten by a shark if he can’t be very good at dreaming. Can he fly while he’s tied up? He’s never tried doing that.

 

    “Take this one to-- _Gil_?” The imperious captain voice falters. “ _Real_ Gil?”

 

    “Jack?” Relief washes over him. “I thought you were too old for pirates.”

 

    “Well… not in dreams.” He ducks his head, coughing nervously a moment before squaring his shoulders and waving for the pirates to attend his orders. “Untie the prisoner at once. And… and I shall place him in my cabin and discuss the terms of his ransom, deal with the others as the first mate sees fit!”

 

    He hauls Gil up to his feet, once one of the pirates has cut the ropes and freed him. Jack leads him inside, and Gil stumbles a bit with the rocking of the ship.

 

    “Does this mean you’ll need your bandana back?” Gil teases, grinning.

 

    “No.” Jack blushes, his voice soft. He steers Gil back towards the bed before he can fall over. It sinks beneath them, soft, as they sit side by side. “You should keep it. I told you you could. You, um… you still--?”

 

    “It’s how I found you before. And, um, practice. I guess. But-- so I had something to hold and focus on?”

 

    “Oh. I-- I’ve never… Sometimes I have dreams where you, um… where I just dream about you normally, but you don’t say much and I can tell you aren’t real, just you’re there and I’m there. But I’ve never been able to make the dreams happen. Um, but… maybe you could give me something else?”

 

    He leans in slightly, reaching up to loosen the frilly scarf thing Gil has on, slow enough for Gil to put an easy stop to. Theoretically, anyway. In reality, Gil feels frozen in place, it’s a struggle just to try to breathe normally as Jack tugs and the knot loosens.

 

    “It-- it wouldn’t be… I mean it’s not real, outside of the dream, it’s not really the same…” He protests weakly, is glad when it’s not a protest that stops Jack from proceeding.

 

    “What we have in dreams is real enough for me. Didn’t you say that, before?”

 

    “Some-something like that.” He nods, swallowing.

 

    “Maybe… if I remember my old dreams every time I have a new dream… I could keep something from one dream in the next one. I mean… right?”

 

    “I don’t see why not. But-- Jack-- I’d give you something in the real world. If we found each other there. I’d give you anything.”

 

    Jack shakes his head, and the scarf comes away in his hand. He brings it to his lips, eyes burning into Gil’s. It feels very romantic-- very Romantic, even, like something from one of the longer and more complicated poems in English class, or out of a movie with a lot of guys in tights and long hair.

 

    “I’d give you anything.” Gil repeats.

 

    “Like what?” Jack smiles, and his other hand rests on Gil’s thigh.

 

    “I don’t know. Anything.” He blushes. “Is-- is this okay? I mean… dreams are okay?”

 

    Jack nods, tucking Gil’s scarf into his open shirt. He shifts, hands moving to curl around Gil’s hip, to cup around the back of his head.

 

    “If you want to. Practice?”

 

    “Yeah.” Gil swallows, and Jack…

 

    _Oh_.

 

    Jack lowers him back down against all the pillows on the bed, and everything is red silks and swathes of fine fabrics trimmed in lace, everything is so soft, and they’re lying across it sideways instead of properly, with legs dangling off, Gil’s feet are planted on the floor, but all he can think about is that he and Jack are sort of kind of in bed together. Horizontal, even. And the kiss is soft, it’s so soft, and Jack’s arms around him are so careful and gentle…

 

    “Have… have you done-- a lot?” Gil asks. “I mean… with people, um… real people?”

 

    “You’re a real person.” Jack smiles, and he nips gently at Gil’s lip before biting his own. “No. But… I mean, that’s why we need practice, right?”

 

    “But… have you?”

 

    “You mean like necking?”

 

    “Or… or anything. I mean… wh-what are we going to do?”

 

    “Oh.” Jack goes red. “I-- I don’t, uh, I don’t really… Just kissing, I guess. Unless you--”

 

    “I’ve never. With anyone.”

 

    “Just kissing.” Jack repeats, and he kisses Gil again, soft again. His breath smells sweet, like mint. Gil can only hope his is about the same-- shouldn’t it be? He brushed his teeth and now he’s asleep, and he doesn’t think he could have been asleep long enough to not still be toothpaste-y if Jack is. Or maybe his brain only wants Jack to smell minty, but then shouldn’t he smell as nice as Jack’s brain wants? He wishes he knew more about how it all works.

 

    He doesn’t care too much about how it all works, though, not… not enough to distract him from the kissing very much. The kissing is nice, even nicer than before, because Jack doesn’t get upset or try to fight himself about it, he just holds Gil in his arms and kisses him, slow and sweet and oh so gentle. He slides his tongue along Gil’s lower lip and then inside his mouth, not frantic or anything. Just sweet, so sweet, the waves rocking them and Jack’s body over his, and the bed so cushy around them… He feels like he’s really getting the hang of kissing back this time, and he pulls Jack’s hat off so that he can run his fingers through his hair.

 

    “Do you dream this a lot?” Gil sighs, gazing up dizzily when Jack pulls away a moment.

 

    “About you?”

 

    “About pirates. Wait, do you, about me?”

 

    “Well, I mean, last time. You were there. Um… once. Once you were in this dream, I mean.”

 

    “Like this?”

 

    Jack goes redder and doesn’t answer. Gil grins.

 

    “Was I your prisoner? Did you ravish me?”

 

    “Shut up.” He turns away, but he doesn’t let go.

 

    “Did you?”

 

    “No! I-- I wouldn’t-- I wouldn’t know how to ravish somebody.” Jack says, his voice falling off to a mumble. “Anyway, I could tell you weren’t real, it-- it’s not right if you aren’t real…”

 

    Gil thinks about offering to let Jack practice ravishing him. Part of him likes the idea. Very specific parts of him like the idea. Except if they’re both real inside the dream, then it’s the same as doing it for real, and he’s not sure about that. He’s not _ready_ for that much to be real. Especially when they can’t see each other in real life…

 

    Someday, maybe… when they’re older? Well… he doesn’t figure they have to be much older. He’ll be eighteen in only months. But would Jack change his mind about whether they could date? Does dream stuff really count or doesn’t it? Who’s even counting?

 

    “I don’t mind if you dream about ravaging me.” He says. “I mean-- if you dream about me and it’s not the real me and you… I don’t mind.”

 

    “ _I_ mind.” Jack frowns, and he rests his forehead against Gil’s. “I don’t want… When it’s just a dream and it’s not you, you don’t… you don’t say all the weird surprising things the real you says, you don’t… you don’t surprise me, or make me laugh, or make me feel…”

 

    “What do I make you feel, Jack?”

 

    “Nothing. I don’t know.” He scowls a little, shuts his eyes tight and stays close. “You say my name too much.”

 

    “Do I?”

 

    “You… you, uh, every other time you say something to me, almost.”

 

    “Did you want me to stop?”

 

    Jack’s breath hitches and he holds tight to a fistful of Gil’s fancy shirt, and when he speaks his voice is small, almost miserable.

 

    “No.” He says, and he kisses Gil again, short and chaste and then… and then it melts into something long and slow, and Gil can feel the way Jack trembles in his arms, feel little drops of wet hit his cheeks. “No, I don’t… I never want you to stop, so help me, Gil, I never-- I never want you to stop…”

 

    “Jack…” And he reaches up, doesn’t feel like he has any other _choice_ but to reach up, thumbs swiping at tears. He’d been on the verge of them himself, the first time they met, and Jack had been a pirate then, too, after a fashion, when he’d come to Gil’s rescue. Gil wishes he knew what to do now to make things better in return. “Jack… I still don’t think you make a very good bad guy…”

 

    Jack pulls back, his eyes wide as he looks down at Gil, his lips parted-- so full, so pink, so shining-wet and just-kissed, and Gil wants those lips. Again and again and again…

 

    “Well I don’t know about that.” Jack says at last, a little stunned. “I had Missy Johnson thrown to the sharks. But I mean, she wasn’t real…”

 

    “Oh, that’s who that was.” Gil nods. “I don’t think it counts as really being bad if she wasn’t real.”

 

    “If I was very good I probably still wouldn’t have done it.” He frowns.

 

    “I think only good people are this concerned with whether or not they’re very good. Anyway, she’s awful to the real you in real life.”

 

    “She is.” Jack groans, his head dropping down to Gil’s shoulder. “She started a rumor about me to a bunch of girls and no one will tell me what it is but no one will go out with me, even with a car and everything, and they, they won’t even _tell_ me. If they would just say what it is, then I could say it isn’t true and she made it up but if I don’t even know, I can’t say anything!”

 

    “Well you deserve nicer than a girl who believes rumors about you, anyway.”

 

    “It’s not about believing them or not, really.” He sighs. “It’s just about… having someone to laugh at. And they all wanna laugh at _me_. ‘Cause she decided it’s me.”

 

    “It won’t always be like that… not at college.”

 

    “Maybe. I don’t want to wait all year. I don’t… I just want to take a girl to a dance, that’s all. Or to the movies, maybe. But I’d like to take a girl to a dance… and just to hang out with people and not be bothered.”

 

    “I don’t see why she’d want to pick on a guy like you.” Gil says, stroking Jack’s cheek.

 

    “Yeah? Like-- like me how?”

 

    “Handsome. And sweet.”

 

    “Gil…”

 

    “Well it’s true. You asked! And-- and you’re real nice and thoughtful and brave, even if you don’t think you are. And tall. And real smart. You said you had advanced classes. And you’re just fun to be with. And it’s not right she’s not nicer to you!”

 

    “Well, she’s been like that since we were kids. Before I was much of any of those things. But… I guess thanks. She-- I-- Well, it’s not important.”

 

    “Okay. So forget about her.” Gil wraps his arms around Jack’s neck, leaning up and kissing his face, a soft flurry of little pecks before he catches his lips, feels Jack smile against him. He grins himself, flops back. “What about me?”

 

    “What about you?” Jack follows him down, kissing his neck.

 

    Is this why they call it ‘necking’? If so, he doesn’t think that’s such a weird thing to call it anymore. It’s nice, he’d let Jack kiss his neck any time…

 

    “What would you do with me-- or what did you do to me in your dreams before? When I’m not the real me?”

 

    Jack pulls away again, blushes again.

 

    “Come on…” Gil pleads, grabbing his shirt and trying to tug him back close. “Tell me… What do you do with the not-real me when you have him at your mercy if you don’t ravish him? Um, me? You don’t throw me to the sharks, do you?”

 

    “Of course I don’t.” Jack laughs.

 

    “Because once I dreamed about a shark, and Jack, I couldn’t sleep right for a week. He wasn’t like panthers at all. And his mouth was enormous!”

 

    “I would never.” Jack kisses his nose. “I would never throw you to the sharks.”

 

    “Never-never?”

 

    “Never in a million years.” He pushes himself up to sit, and Gil follows after, grinning when Jack cups his cheek. “Never in a billion. Not you.”

 

    “Then… what?”

 

    “Well…” Again, Jack leans away, wraps his arms around himself instead of around Gil where they very much belong, at least in dreams, and looks at the corner. Gil looks at the corner as well, and determines Jack must be avoiding him, because the corner is not at all compelling viewing. “I mean… it started the same, um… Where you get brought out for me to, to look at. And, uh… and I swing down on a rope and land in front of you, and… Only I could tell you weren’t real, when you weren’t.”

 

    Gil slides off the bed, kneeling beside it, his hands coming up as if bound before him.

 

“And then what?” He asks breathlessly. Held prisoner? Or made into a pirate himself? Grand adventures? _Something_ had to have happened, if not ravishment. The details of which he’s a little fuzzy on, but he has to assume Jack knows enough about, even if he doesn’t know how to actually do it.

 

Jack turns to look at him and immediately looks up at the ceiling, a whine tight in the back of his throat. “ _Dammit_ , Gil…”

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t-- Nevermind.” He sighs, rising to his feet. He takes Gil’s chin, putting on his imperious pirate captain look and tilting him to one side and then the other, inspecting him. “And then I say ‘release the prisoner and send him back to his ship! He’s never worked a day in his life and he’s no good to me!’, and that’s what they do with you.”

 

“No! Really?” Gil laughs, and Jack’s hand slips to caress his cheek.

 

“No. I really say…” He licks his lips, hesitating a moment. And when he continues, there’s no imperious pirate captain about him, only a very sweet boy playing at being one. “Release the prisoner. He’s too beautiful to keep in a cage.”

 

Gil isn’t entirely sure what to _say_. Jack touches his chin again, and at a little gentle pressure, Gil rises, tumbles right into Jack’s arms the moment his feet are under him. But Jack catches him, holds him against his chest, and they don’t fall over together.

 

“Did you?” He asks, and Jack nods.

 

“And then I kissed you, once… but it didn’t really feel right when it wasn’t the real you. So I let you go. And then you said ‘the crown will send men to hunt you down like a dog, Captain Jack’, and so I said ‘the crown had better send their most beautiful men if they want any quarter from me’. And then we let you go and you left back to your own ship, and I guess that was… that was, uh, pretty much it… That’s the only time it’s-- I mean, that you-- The not real you, I mean…”

 

“I wish--” Gil starts, then bites his lip. “It sounds like you have fun in your dreams sometimes.”

 

“Sometimes. More fun when you’re around, usually. The real you. I haven’t… I haven’t had a lot of good dreams in a long time, it feels like. Except the ones you make.”

 

“Oh…”

 

“What do you wish?” Jack touches his cheek again, head tilting to the side.

 

“I wish you could feel like that during the day, that’s all.”

 

Jack’s hand drops and something shutters in his eyes, the curious, open sweetness of his smile dimming. “Yeah. Well.”

 

“Did I say something wrong?”

 

“No. I just… I don’t feel like that during the day. That’s not your fault. It’s just… life, I guess.”

 

“Well… I’ll have to try to make more good dreams for you, then, I guess.”

 

Jack pushes his hair back from his face, traces his fingertips over the planes of Gil’s face. He looks at him for a long moment as if he’s something new, or something Jack hasn’t seen in a long time, maybe. He shakes his head at last, and settles his arm back down around Gil.

 

“How are you… like this?”

 

“Like what?” Gil laughs, more startled than amused.

 

“Like _this_ , like _you_ , like nobody else I know, nobody I’ve ever _met_. How are you-- like this with me?”

 

“I don’t know. I’m not sure how else to be.” He shrugs, and lays his head on Jack’s shoulder, though it’s awkward on his neck.

 

“I wish I didn’t-- Or I wish I was--” Jack stops himself, frustrated, so much it bleeds into Gil’s own heart and all he can do is try and push something soothing back. He thinks about the gentle waves, and the coolness of the sea breeze, and the sounds, and he thinks about the softness of the bed, and he thinks about his own bedroom and the way the light comes through the window. He thinks about kittens and puppies and vanilla ice cream, and about Jack tying a bandana around his scraped knee with infinite tenderness, and how quickly and fiercely he had loved him as a child. Gil has never been very good at soothing, but he thinks about everything that could possibly soothe, and he feels Jack relax in his arms.

 

“Jack… I like you how you are. I just wish you were happier, and that everyone was nicer to you, that’s all. But-- how you are is good.” He kisses his cheek. “I understand if you wish you were different sometimes, but-- but that doesn’t mean you’re not good just how you are. Right?”

 

“How are you like this?” Jack repeats, sighing. He rests his head on Gil’s shoulder in turn.

 

“Just am, I guess.”

 

“Well… I like how you are, too.”

 

“Hey, Jack?”

 

“Mm?”

 

“When’s your birthday?”

 

“Not for a while. Not ‘til June, June first. Why, when’s yours?”

 

“April twelfth. Um-- no, I was just thinking… maybe if we… if we find each other, um… maybe if I practice everything, controlling the dream-scape and everything, I could… make you something? Like… a really good dream.”

 

Jack lifts his head, giving Gil a puzzled, warm little smile. “Okay. Well… but what should we do for yours? I mean… we should-- we should try to be together, right? I don’t think I can make anything, not on purpose, but, um… but we could… You can tell me about how it was. And… I could still give you something.”

 

“Something like what?”

 

“I mean like something.” Jack shrugs, his look unreadable. “ _You_ know. Like… _something_.”

 

He toys with the front of Gil’s shirt, and the _something_ clicks into place.

 

“Yeah.” He nods. “Sure, okay, _something_.”

 

Surely he’ll be ready then, he’ll be eighteen, he’ll be a man, as little as that seems possible. So he’ll want to then. Well, he wants to now, sort of, except he doesn’t really know how and also it’s the third most terrifying thing he can think of after basking sharks and public speaking. He’ll be less conflicted then.

 

It’s a problem that Jack _won’t_ be, though, isn’t it? But then… Jack is more mature, and he’s sort of been a man for years already so maybe that makes a person readier when the time comes, and it’s only a couple months difference and it would happen in a dream, they wouldn’t really be doing anything. He trusts Jack’s judgment, considering Jack is so careful about all this stuff anyway. If he thinks it’s okay to do something in a dream, it must be.

 


	4. Your Wildest Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look... I trust that the readership for a fic based on an already-little-known barely-even-a-cult-movie movie old enough that if it was a not-too-responsible human being it could have a child in high school is not the audience that's going to get up in arms about almost-sex between a character who has just turned eighteen and a character who will turn eighteen in a couple months, but like... if the idea of budding teen sexuality-turned-budding adult sexuality offends, like...
> 
> A) I really don't know what to tell you?
> 
> B) but they keep their pants on and make the emotionally healthy call to not have sex they aren't both ready to have, if that's any consolation.
> 
> Anyway, it's an emotional chapter that is mostly not about sex anyway.

_I love you more than a duck can swim,_

_And more than a grapefruit squirts,_

_I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,_

_And more than a toothache hurts._

 

_As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,_

_Or a juggler hates a shove,_

_As a hostess detests unexpected guests,_

_That's how much you I love._

-Ogden Nash

 

    Gil goes to bed the night of his birthday, with his stomach already aswirl in anticipation. He can barely fall asleep to begin with, is so nervous they won’t line up with each other, that he won’t dream at the right time, but sleep finally takes him.

 

    He finds himself high on a hill, under an apple tree in full blossom, beneath a perfect-painted sky, soft-edged purple clouds and a golden moon, and stars upon stars. And Jack, sitting on a blanket staring up at it all. Gil approaches, taking a seat next to him, not as close as he might like to. He’s not sure-- he’s not sure about so many things with Jack, who sometimes kisses him like his life depends on it and sometimes keeps him at arm’s length-- if he remembers what the day is, or remembers what he’d once suggested. Twice in a row he didn’t reach for Gil or let him take his hand, and they didn’t kiss at all, and it was fine. They had fun, they explored a castle and a ghost ship. He just doesn’t know if he really wants to… to do anything in particular.

 

    “Gil!” Jack motions him to come closer, holds his arm out to wrap around Gil’s shoulders when he does scoot in next to him. He kisses the side of his head, grinning.

 

    “Hi, Jack.” Gil cuddles in against Jack’s shoulder with a sigh.

 

    “Did you have a, uh, a good birthday? Was it-- Did you have a party?”

 

    “Oh-- no, not… My mom pulled me out of school to take me out to lunch, and then she said there was really no point going back for the rest of the day, and my grades were in good enough shape I could catch up okay. So I got to spend the afternoon at the pool. So that was nice. Um, and then just, you know, dinner and cake and presents with my parents and my aunt Susan and my grandma. I guess it’s not real exciting, but I mean I thought getting out of school half the day was sure good enough, and-- and I don’t really, I’m not good at big parties… I always feel kind of awkward.”

 

    “Really?”

 

    “Yeah. I always… I dunno. I’m bad at dancing, or I land in the punch bowl, or I choke on something, or… I mean I go to parties sometimes but I never really bother having one.”

 

    “That sounds nice, though. Just dinner at home with your family.”

 

    “Yeah.” Gil nods. “Dad’s always busy with work, or else he’s at home but he’s thinking about work, so it’s nice when he just… pays attention. And my mom, um… well, she’s never too busy for me-- not for a whole day, because, well, most of what she does, with ladies’ societies and stuff, is when I’m at school anyway. So we talk at dinner every night, about. I mean, she’s always encouraged me to be okay on my own, but she’s still there when I need her, she doesn’t, you know… She says she doesn’t mind if I need her a little while longer. I guess she’ll have to get used to it when I go off to college and all. I, uh… I didn’t get in at Dad’s first choice, but Mom’s happy about that, um, ‘cause I got in somewhere closer. She’d worry if I couldn’t come home on weekends, at least until she figures out I won’t die living on my own. I mean I won’t be on my own, I’ll have a roommate.”

 

    “Did you get what you really wanted?”

 

    “Not yet. I mean-- yes.” Gil blushes, hiding a little against Jack’s shoulder, relaxing into a smile at the way Jack laughs. “Um, a couple records, and my aunt Susan got me a book that looks interesting. Um, about-- about ESP.”

 

    “You believe in that, huh?”

   

    “Well you’re here, aren’t you? What’s this if it isn’t ESP?”

 

    Jack laughs and leans his head against Gil’s. “Yeah, okay. Maybe it’ll, ah... explain how all this works, then.”

 

    “Maybe. Or… how I can get better at it. It’s still pretty hit-and-miss sometimes… And I got new clothes and stuff, so when I go off to college it won’t be with… all my old school uniform pants and shirts and half of those are two inches too short… so that’s nice, too. And just, you know, things like that. Like… grown-up presents. I got a desk set for when I go off to college, too, and stationery, and… cufflinks. I got cufflinks. I’ve never owned cufflinks before. Do you own cufflinks?”

 

    “One pair.” Jack nods. He angles his neck to kiss the top of Gil’s head, making him laugh and snuggle in tighter. “But I don’t have a shirt that uses them anymore. The sleeves are… they were coming three quarters of the way down my arm and I just got a white shirt with buttons at the cuffs.”

 

    “I have shirts that use them but I always used to just, my dad would lend me a pair. Tell me not to lose them. And I never did! I mean I only wear shirts that nice for special occasions anyway. But I guess you never know when there’s going to be special occasions.”

 

    “I guess not. So…” Jack’s voice drops an octave, and Gil breaks out in goosebumps. “What, uh… what _else_ were you hoping to get?”

 

    Gil almost just says ‘laid’, but he doesn’t think that’s very romantic. He’d like his first time to be very romantic. The way Jack was romantic before, when Gil had wound up in his pirate dream.

 

    “Oh, I don’t know…” He giggles, wishes it didn’t come out sounding so goofy. He pulls away from Jack, lying back in what he hopes is a seductive manner. “I just wanted to spend the night with _you_ , really. Why, did you have something you wanted to give me?”

 

    He bites his lip, thrilling at the way Jack groans over his little as-if-I-didn’t-know act. He’s never been _seductive_ before. He’s been groaned at a lot, but for very different reasons. The idea that he could _do_ something to get that noise from Jack, that the noise could be a good thing…

 

    “I have something to give you, yeah.” Jack crawls over him, and Gil lays back flat, feels the way Jack’s thigh presses against his, the places their bodies touch when they breathe, so little space between them now… just enough distance to look up into Jack’s eyes, to see his lips, parted and full and perfect, and oh… this is what it’s going to be like. This is _it_.

 

    “A big something?” Gil asks.

 

    “Well-- Um-- I--” Jack ducks his head for just half a moment, and his eyes are soft when they meet Gil’s, and so dark, half-lidded. “Maybe, uh, you’ll tell me, when you get it.”

 

    “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He giggles again, and he hates how stupid he sounds, but Jack doesn’t seem to think he sounds stupid. He still looks down at him all soft and warm.

 

    There’s a gentle breeze, it stirs Jack’s curls, and brings a scattering of blossoms raining down on them, and Jack laughs, fingertips brushing through Gil’s hair.

 

    “What?”

 

    “You’ve got-- there’s flowers in your hair. It’s, um… it’s cute, though. You’re cute.”

 

    “Oh.” He grins. “You, too. I mean-- the flowers, and also-- You’re real cute. I mean, I always thought… Oh, Jack…”

 

    “I haven’t even kissed you yet.” Jack chuckles, his touch trailing down to Gil’s cheek. “Gil… just because we’re only practice and it’s only in dreams… I hope you don’t think that means I don’t like you or anything, just because I can’t-- just because I can’t be like this in real life. Because I do. And-- and I wouldn’t want to practice with just anybody. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t do any of this with just anybody, but-- Well. I just hope you don’t think I-- Well, I don’t know. That I don’t like you. Or that you aren’t special, that-- that practicing’s not special to me, because it _is_.”

 

    “It is to me, too. I-- I’ve never been… all the way with someone. Or-- Well… I’ve never really-- You’re the only boy I’ve ever kissed, so…”

 

    “It’s okay.” Jack promises. “I-- I haven’t before, either, but… we’ll figure it out. And-- you’re the only boy I’ve ever kissed. I-- I think I’m going to kiss you right now, actually. If that’s something you’d be into.”

 

    Gil nods. Jack leans down, lowers himself slow until it feels like every inch of him is touching every inch of Gil, or at least all the inches that matter seem lined right up together, or maybe he just forgets that any parts of him exist that aren’t touching Jack, and there’s a swell of violins, ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me’ filling the air as Jack does all three of those things, if not necessarily in that order.

 

    They’re definitely getting the hang of kissing, enough that they probably don’t need to call the kissing part ‘practice’, because everything Jack’s mouth is doing to his feels very well practiced. He knows exactly how to reduce Gil to a quivering, moaning puddle, just how to tease him, just how hard he can nip at Gil’s lower lip if he wants to make him squeak but not to leave any sting behind, how hard to tug, and just how to soothe over the places his teeth were with the swipe of a tongue…

 

    They normally pause, between kisses. Whether it’s for nervous laughter and awkward conversation, or just to keep themselves getting too caught up in the passion of it, or for something else, it’s just never been like this, never so unceasing, and they’ve only kissed lying down a couple of times. Always with a lot of pausing, not like this, and this…

 

    Not just their mouths, but the way they shift and squirm to get closer to each other, the way Jack’s body weighs down on his, pushes into him just so, how it feels when their chests slide against each other, or their thighs.

 

    Mel Carter sings ‘When you take me in your arms and drive me slowly out of my mind’, and Jack’s hips roll into Gil’s in time with the music, and Gil has never been driven out of his mind quite like this. He’s so hard already, and Jack is moaning right back against him with every kiss, and he wants things he can hardly name or envision.

 

    “Oh, Jack…” Gil gasps, and Jack’s lips fall to his throat the second the kiss breaks, as the song goes ‘kiss me, kiss me’, and Jack says Gil’s name a half dozen times, mouth hot and wet at Gil’s neck. “Oh, oh, _Jack_ … Oh--!”

 

    _Sex_. They’re going to have sex. It kind of feels like they’ve started already, but they’re still fully dressed. Gil’s stomach roils, in a less fun way, when he thinks about being naked for the first time here in what’s been such a nice dream, really, and when he thinks about waking up in the morning with his pajamas cold and damp. He _wants_ Jack to be his first, and he _wants_ them to have sex, he really does. But… like this? He feels suddenly so unsure, and so ashamed for feeling unsure when it had all been perfect. The moon and the stars and the flowers and the music, and Jack, _Jack_ , who kisses him so well and who feels so good, he _does_. It’s just, Gil panics a little, when Jack gets a hand between them and starts to fumble with his belt.

 

    “Mm-- Jack-- wait!” He says, and it comes out louder than he means it to, because Jack sits back fast, his hands and lips much too far away. “Oh-- I didn’t mean you had to be all the way… not here. I didn’t mean that, just…”

 

    “It’s okay.” Jack relaxes a little. He looks Gil in the eye, except for a brief flicker down to the unmistakable bulge in his slacks. “If you’re okay.”

 

    Gil nods. “I don’t really… I don’t want to _stop_ , I just… I don’t know if I’m ready. Oh, I’m sorry, Jack!”

 

    “Don’t be stupid, don’t-- don’t be _sorry_.” Jack wipes at Gil’s cheek gently, settling to lie down next to him. His hand moves to hover over Gil’s stomach, waiting. “You don’t have to be ready… Can I touch you?”

 

    “Yes, please. I feel stupid.”

 

    “Well, don’t. It’s okay.”

 

    “You were all _ready_. I thought I would be ready… I mean, I’m eighteen!”

 

    “So?” Jack laughs, rubbing gentle circles over Gil’s belly.

 

    “So… so I’m supposed to be a man now.” He pouts. “What if I never am one? I do like drinking coffee, but only if there’s a lot of milk and sugar in it. What if I’m always only ever just half a man?”

 

    “Gil… you’re enough of a man for me. Promise.”

 

    “Promise?”

 

    “I just said I did, didn’t I?” He kisses Gil’s shoulder, soft. “It’s your birthday. I just… I wanted to be able to give you a good time, but-- a good time doesn’t have to be all the way, or, or anything. We’re still having a good time, right? If we-- if we stop now? We can still look at the stars, or… I don’t know, or just, uh… Yeah, the stars. Music. Just… hanging out.”

 

    “Well, I like hanging out with you.” Gil agrees eagerly. “Would-- would you just hold me? Just for a little bit?”

 

    “You’re the birthday boy. Here, roll onto your side-- looking out that way.” Jack directs, and Gil does as he’s guided to, feeling Jack fit to him perfectly, his chest so warm against Gil’s back, his arm around him. He idly scratches at a tickle to banish it, without Gil even asking or telling him where, and he nuzzles very gently at the back of Gil’s neck. “There. How’s that?”

 

    “That’s real nice, Jack.” Gil sighs. “You’re real nice.”

 

    “I dunno…”

 

    “No, really! A lot of guys get irritated when a girl says no. Well, not like I’m a girl or anything, but the guys I know, they complain a lot about when they take a girl out somewhere romantic and she kisses back a lot and then says that’s as far as it goes. You’re not mad?”

 

    “I’m not mad.” Jack kisses the back of his neck, hand winding up over Gil’s heart. “Anyway… if we went all the way here like this… um, haha, well… I didn’t really think about what would happen with our bodies, but…”

 

    “I know, but we might… I mean I haven’t had a dream like _that_ in a while!”

 

    “I stopped getting them when I was fifteen. Well, mostly.”

 

    “Yeah, me too, mostly, Um… I-- I had one-- Or, I mean, not… Just-- The first time we kissed? I… I guess I did a little bit.”

 

    Jack laughs. “I did a little, it’s okay. I… I had-- I had a couple dreams like that, when we hadn’t seen each other in a while? And it wasn’t the real you. But it wasn’t the real me, either-- it was like I was floating outside myself watching us, so I couldn’t really do anything… but, uh… Well, yeah. I sometimes had those dreams about you.”

 

    “I liked some things-- I mean… I liked the parts where you were close to me, and how you made me feel, but… I don’t really want to clean up after that stuff again. Um, I mean-- But maybe another time? I might not mind so much, if-- if we were ready, or… If it’s the only way.”

 

    Jack sighs against the back of Gil’s ear. “Maybe another time. It-- it’s okay to not be ready, or to not be sure. But it… it’s only fun if you’re having fun.”

 

    “Well… I’m having fun right now, I think. I-- I’m just really glad to be with you. And-- and it felt good, I just… I’m not ready to take my pants off. I guess.”

 

    “Maybe sometime when we have a real bed, and then it won’t feel so-- you know? We’ll see. No rush. We can just kiss.”

 

    He kisses Gil’s neck again for emphasis, soft and chaste.

 

    “What’s something you’ve never done, that you want to do? I mean, aside from-- you know.” Gil asks.

 

    “What do you mean?”

 

    “Like, what would you want to do? For fun. A new, special thing.”

 

    “I’ve never been on a roller coaster.” Jack shrugs, and snuggles at Gil, holds him tighter now.

 

    “Really?”

 

    “Yeah, never been to an amusement park or, uh, or anything like, like that. So I guess a roller coaster. Why?”

 

    Gil just shrugs and cuddles back.

 

    He has until June to practice, and he makes use of every solo dream he has between his birthday and Jack’s, building the park and the roller coaster from his own limited experience. He isn’t really fond of roller coasters, really. It’s one thing to be able to fly freely in a dream, it’s a whole other thing to be strapped into something in the real world that zooms all over the place and turns you upside down. But this is a dream, so maybe he’ll like it fine, he did create it, after all.

 

    The look on Jack’s face would make it worth it if he doesn’t.

 

    “What’s all this?” He asks, rushing to meet Gil.

 

    “It’s, um… it’s an amusement park? Maybe it’s not a whole one, and… parts of it are more like a park-park? There’s some grass and some water and some ducks and a wishing well and some benches, over that way, uh… but! There’s a carousel and a roller coaster and a dark ride with little boats, and one that spins around, um… well, it’s just-- I mean, that’s enough for one dream, I thought. Do you like it?”

 

    “Gil, you… you made all this for me? You-- you shouldn’t have… Wow. Okay, let’s go. Take me around. Show me everything.”

 

    Twilight is falling, in soft violets and golds, the lights only just beginning to come up around them, and so Gil starts with the grassy spot, with the bench and the wishing well, and the bridge over the long, narrow stretch of the duck pond. Gil snags a bag of popcorn from a shiny little cart, tossing a few pieces to the ducks and offering the bag to Jack to do the same. They linger over duck-feeding until it’s too dark to really enjoy, and the colorful lights come up, the nearby carousel playing music.

 

    “Wanna start small and work our way up to the roller coaster?” Gil asks, offering his hand. Jack takes it, grinning.

 

    “Show me everything.”

 

    Gil doesn’t think he’s ever felt as giddy. Everything is colorful lights and calliope music and the way Jack smiles and the warmth of his hand. Everything is the shining white carved horses with the bright saddles and… whatever you call the bright sort of little costumes that medieval horses wear, that most of them have. Jack lets Gil escort him up onto the carousel, onto one of the horses, and they take a go around, laughing, two grown men-- if only just-- riding on a carousel.

 

    From there, they let a slightly more exciting ride spin them until they’re dizzy, walk along the path to the dark ride, where they climb into a little pirate ship built for two.

 

    Jack slides his arm around Gil, and Gil cozies right up to him. It’s what you’re supposed to do, he imagines, on rides like this. Everything’s dark, and maybe a little scary, or maybe peaceful and pretty, and it’s an excuse to put your arms around someone. Maybe you pretend to be scared, or maybe you just ignore everything so you can make out.

 

    The first time around, though, Jack marvels at everything, asking Gil how hard it was to make. It wasn’t, really-- it’s mostly his subconscious at work, all he had to do was make it clear that the ride needed to be there and needed to work, and needed to be something mostly slow and mostly dark. But still, it feels good to have Jack paying attention and talking about everything as if Gil is _clever_.

 

    “Can we go around again?” Jack asks, when they slow to a stop. And his voice is soft and low, and so they don’t get off the ride, they let it take them around. And this time, Gil kisses him, and Jack’s hand slides up his thigh, and Gil lets it, likes it.

 

    He buries both of his own hands in Jack’s hair, and focuses on kissing him as well as he possibly can, coaxing Jack’s tongue into his own mouth with a moan.

 

    Jack’s hand slides up Gil’s thigh, even higher, and Gil lets him do that, too, moaning again. And then Jack’s hand slides up just a little more and Gil yelps.

 

    “Sorry--”

 

    “No, you can! Just-- You can…” Gil nods. Watches the rapt attention on Jack’s face in the dark as his hand returns very delicately to Gil’s crotch. “You can.”

 

    Jack touches, feather light, just tracing out the shape of his swelling cock through the fabric of his trousers, before withdrawing his hand.

 

    “Wow.” Jack smiles, shy.

 

    “We could… we could come back and do this one again, after the rollercoaster?” Gil suggests, his voice a squeak.

 

    “We could.” Jack cups his cheek, kissing him again, soft this time. “Maybe…”

 

    “Maybe.” Gil echoes. Jack’s face goes sad a moment, and so Gil grabs his hand, squeezing. “We can! We can do anything you want. Here or by the water or anywhere, promise.”

 

    “Don’t worry about it.” Jack shakes his head, giving Gil’s hand a squeeze and his cheek a pat. “Just show me what you made for now, I-- I wanna see.”

 

    Jack gives him a steadying hand as they exit the little boat, and Gil returns the favor, despite not being very steady himself. He’s still half-hard, and he wonders if maybe he will be ready, this time, but it already feels so monumental to be touched through his clothes like that, and to be looked at with the hunger and the curiosity that Jack had had.

 

    Maybe he won’t be too shy to ask if he can touch Jack, too. Even just through his clothes as well.

 

    Jack looks around at everything, wide eyed and laughing as Gil drags him on towards the roller coaster, and he reaches for Gil’s other hand, spinning him around.

 

    “You made this!” He beams, glowing. “You made this all, you… on purpose! And it all does everything, it’s-- You made this!”

 

    “You like it?” Gil trips forward, and he catches himself before his weight goes crashing into Jack, but he doesn’t mind Jack also catching him. How close their faces are… the wetness in Jack’s eyes and the sad, confused softness of his smile.

 

    “It’s beautiful. _You’re_ \-- Thank you.” He sighs, holding Gil a moment before returning to walking hand in hand with him.

 

    “You’re welcome.” Gil says, and he swings their hands between them a while, a bounce in his step. He feels like he could glow, like he could float up off the ground. And, well… he could, if he wanted to, but he doesn’t need to, because he feels like he _is_. “Happy birthday.”

 

    Jack looks, open-mouthed, at the roller coaster, as they come up to it. He squeezes Gil’s hand, nodding absently.

 

    Gil does not really… _enjoy_ the roller coaster, even though he made it. He doesn’t really find he minds it, though, with Jack whooping joyously beside him as they hang onto the bar and each other’s hands, as the wind rushes past them, and it’s all stars around them and a perfect moon, not that it’s easy to focus on the sights.

 

    “Can we-- can we go again?” Jack asks him, when they finally slide to a stop. He’s the most beautiful thing Gil has ever seen. His hair is a mess and his eyes sparkle, and his _smile_ , his _smile_ …

 

    “We can go again. As many times as you want, it’s your birthday.”

 

    “I almost--” Jack bites his lip, and something sad touches him, cuts through Gil like a knife for a fraction of a second as Jack clings to his hand. “I wish I didn’t have to wake up in the morning. I wish I could stay here, forever… that we never had to really grow up.”

 

    He swallows, and squeezes Gil’s hand, brings it in to hold close to his heart a moment.

   

    “I feel like that sometimes. I could live in a dream with you forever, if-- I mean, if we could.”

 

    “And we wouldn’t have to be any-- we wouldn’t have to be anything but us. We’d make all our own rules. We’d build our own worlds, you could show me how… I-- There’s so much stuff I used to look forward to, and now I’m here and I don’t want to be… I don’t _want_ to be done with… with how things, with--”

 

    Jack lets go of Gil’s hand suddenly, wiping at his eyes, and he bats Gil away when he tries to come in and dry his tears for him, shaking his head.

 

    “It’s okay, really.” He forces a smile. “Did you feel like this?”

 

    “A little. A little scared. I mean… things are already set up for my future, I never really had to wonder about it… but I still get scared sometimes. Like… what if I can’t do a good enough job at all this stuff? Things like that. My mom says she thinks it’s normal to worry just ‘cause everything’s going to change soon, but once I get into the swing of things I’ll be okay and I can always come home on the weekends… I guess we just have to hold on and…” Gil shrugs.

 

    “Yeah… I guess. Things… things have to change, that’s just how life is, but…” Jack sighs. “Take me on one last ride before I have to grow up?”

 

    “Anything you want.” Gil promises.

 

    They go twice more, at which point Gil would gamely go again, except Jack tells him he looks a little green, and walks him back towards the pond and the wishing well, to sit on the bench a while and get his bearings.

 

    “Was that too much?” Jack reaches up, adjusting the way Gil’s hair falls across his forehead. “Sorry, that was too much…”

 

    “It’s fine. I’m fine. I mean… next one we go on we just won’t, uh, get so turned around, I guess. Or-- or we could just… enjoy the air. Um… we can do what you want.” He leans in, expectant, body already tingling in anticipation of Jack’s touch, the memory of a big, warm hand sliding up his thigh, all the way up…

 

    In the dreams between his birthday and Jack’s, the ones where they’ve been together, it’s not like Gil hasn’t gotten hard. They’ve been all over each other enough, not so different from how they’d been on the hill, stopped short of finishing in their pants, but there’s a sort of distance in fully-clothed grinding that that hand on him had removed. It’s one thing to get carried away with the emotion and the sensation, another thing to deliberately reach for it, maybe. It had been the way it made Jack shy and awed, too, that this might happen and that it might happen again, that more might happen… And Gil always wakes up aching, on a hair trigger, and usually with more precome than is strictly comfortable to wake up to, but… it makes him think he could live with waking up to the mess, if Jack wanted to go all the way this time. On the ride or on the grass or anywhere. Or he’d find them a bed somewhere, there are corners where the dream could fit one in if he decided they needed one, it doesn’t matter to him.

 

    Jack stands up instead of leaning in to kiss him, though, and so Gil rises, too, sticking close as they wander along the duck pond, the ducks all tucked into their nests for the night, but the moon and stars reflecting on the silvery ripples.

 

    “What’s wrong?” Gil asks.

 

    “Nothing. Well. I mean, just, uh… all the stuff I said before. About growing up. It’s… it’s been on my mind a lot lately. The things I have to do now, and… the things I can’t do now.”

 

    “Well… you can worry about that in the morning, can’t you?” He reaches the little red cart where he’d gotten the popcorn, this time pulling out two large puffs of cotton candy. He presents one to Jack with a hopeful smile, and he gets a smile back. Reluctant and still-worried and charmed in spite of himself, Jack scuffing a toe against the ground and shaking his head.

 

    “No… some things… some things can’t wait. I wish they could. You-- you’re a really sweet guy, Gil. That… that’s something I guess hasn’t changed at all, since we were kids.”

 

    Gil smiles, shrugging. He can already feel the stickiness on his face after just the first two bites, which… ugh, well, that also hasn’t changed since they were kids. Some things are just impossible to eat without making a mess.

 

    At least, for Gil. Jack tears off small wisps and pops them neatly and carefully into his mouth, no wet, melting sugar to get everywhere. They walk along the water, to the end and then back, without saying much, just slowly nibbling, just sharing each other’s company, until they come to a stop.

 

    “I can’t taste it.” Jack frowns, staring at the cotton candy in his hand. “I guess… I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything in a dream before. I just…” He looks around, suddenly teary. “You did all this for me, and I wish you hadn’t.”

 

    “Why?”

 

    “Because… Because I don’t deserve it, or-- Because you shouldn’t waste it on me, when I-- Because!” He gestures to the whole of the park, before tossing the cotton candy back at the cart in frustration.

 

    Gil chases after him, coming to a stop when he sees Jack collapsed onto the bench near the wishing well.

 

    “Gil, we can’t do this anymore.” He says, words muffled in his folded arms.

 

    Gil has to catch himself against the well, feels as if the whole world has gone out from under him. “What… what can’t we do anymore?”

 

    “Anything. We can’t… You can’t dream me anymore, I can’t dream you. I can’t be your boyfriend, not even like this, I have to grow up! I have to be serious. About girls and stuff. About-- about my future. Things are finally going to be how they’re supposed to be, and I can’t-- I can’t _do_ this. We’re done practicing, now we have to be adults.”

 

    “Why can’t we be adults who do this?” Gil asks, fighting against the hiccuping sob that catches in his chest.

 

    “Because we can’t.” Jack says, and he sounds like he’s close to tears himself, and Gil just wants to _fix_ it. To dry his tears and kiss his cheeks until the crying stops, until neither of them needs to cry.

 

    “But Jack--”

 

    “Gil!” He pushes himself up, glaring sharply in spite of the redness around his eyes. “I have _plans_ for my life! I’m going to get a real job and marry the right girl and-- and my life is going to be normal, people are finally starting to just treat me like normal and I’m going to be normal! And normal people don’t have dream boyfriends, normal guys don’t-- I’m not like you, and I can’t do this. And I can’t see you anymore.”

 

    Gil slides down to sit on the ground, hugging his knees, breaths coming sharp and fast as the tears slide down his face, down his neck. “But I-- I don’t-- I don’t _understand_ , you-- You want to never see me again? Not even as friends?”

 

    “We can’t just be friends, we took it too far.” Jack pulls one of his own legs up, resting his forehead against his knee, hunched in on himself. “Go on, get mad.”

 

    “I’m not mad.” Gil sniffles. “Just hurt.”

 

    “Get mad! I let you go to all this trouble and I let you kiss me again and I touched, I touched you, and you-- and you worked so hard and I shouldn’t have touched you, when I knew I had to say goodbye, I shouldn’t have let you kiss me on the boat and I shouldn’t have put my hand-- and I shouldn’t have let you do so much, so just get _mad_ at me!”

 

    “I’m not mad!” Gil wails. “I’m just in love with you!”

 

    “W-what?” Jack blinks. “No-- _no_. You-- you _can’t_ , you don’t _love_ me, Gil, you-- you can’t _love_ me!”

 

    “Well I do!”

 

    “Well stop it!” Jack shouts, except he’s crying too, isn’t really angry at Gil.

 

    If he was, maybe Gil could get mad, but Jack’s as hurt and confused as he is, Gil can _feel_ him, lost and upset and throwing it all off into the air around them, and the night gets even darker, and the thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance, and even that sounds heavy and sad and a million miles from angry. It’s both of them, he thinks, like the flowers and the music were both of them, must have been both of them, the night they first kissed, and now Jack thinks they can’t, ever again, they can’t even see each other, not at all.

 

    Of course they will, they _will_. Gil knows it. They’re both going to study journalism, and… and they’ll see each other again, they just _will_. They’ll see each other, in the real world. In a class, or… somewhere. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less now, to think Jack doesn’t _want_ to see him, that he doesn’t want Gil to love him…

 

    “I don’t know how to stop it. And-- and I don’t want to stop it, and I just _do_ , okay? You don’t have to love me back if you don’t want to, but I get to feel how I feel.” He sniffles, burying his face against his knees.

 

    “No you don’t, you don’t get to-- There are rules, Gil, the real world has rules! And you don’t just get to decide they don’t matter, if I have to grow up and live by the rules, you don’t get to, you can’t sit here and tell me you love me!”

 

    “I said you didn’t have to love me back, didn’t I?”

 

    “Well, that’s not how it works!”

 

    The sky opens up, drops of rain ice cold and hitting hard, feeling like needles, and neither one of them has a jacket. Gil hunches in on himself and presses close to the well, not that it offers any kind of shelter, until Jack’s hand closes around his arm. He’s less gentle than usual, in hauling Gil to his feet, in dragging him blindly through the driving rain, he pulls him along and then up, and then there’s the sound of the rain, but the two of them are safe from it, sheltered by the canopy of the carousel.

 

    Jack lets go of him as soon as they stop, walks a few feet, slipping between horses, leaning on one that’s stopped at the top of its up-and-down journey. Gil just hunches in on himself again and shivers.

 

    “Why didn’t you leave me?” He asks, maybe a little more petulant than he’d meant to sound. But Jack never used to let go of him so fast. Maybe when they kissed, but that was different, and he hadn’t _stayed_ away.

 

    “Because you wouldn’t have the sense to get out of the rain.” Jack says. _Because it’s cold and it’s wet and I couldn’t leave you_ , Gil hears. Or… feels.

 

    “It’s just a dream, it’s not like it could hurt me.” He shrugs, clambering up onto the nearest horse. He holds onto the pole, slumping forward, patting absently at the shiny painted head. “You could have. You should have, right? You-- you don’t want to see me anymore. You could have just left me to wake up.”

 

    “It’s not about what I want.”

 

    “Isn’t it?”

 

    “You don’t get it. No. It’s about growing up, it’s about doing the things you have to do, it’s… there are rules, and responsibilities, and I don’t get to run around having fun with you. Definitely we shouldn’t be making out.”

 

    “I don’t get it.” Gil huffs. “I don’t get why you can’t let yourself be happy.”

 

    “Well… we’re just not living in the same world, I guess. I’m going to be happy, I’m going to get the life I want, it’s-- I’m happy living a normal life.”

 

    He’s _not_ , and Gil knows it, but what’s he going to say, ‘I know your life better than you’? He doesn’t even know how he knows. Maybe the dream, maybe because it means their subconsciouses are all mashed together, and if Jack paid attention he would know how Gil felt. Or maybe he only doesn’t because they feel such similar things that it only seems like an echo, that he hasn’t stopped to try and tug the threads and find Gil on the other end, but to Gil it all feels clear. The tangle of _want_ and _hurt_ and _confused_ , it’s both of them. Whatever their own reasons, it’s all the same emotions, flowing in and out of each other.

 

    “Have a nice life, then.” He sighs. “Happy birthday.”

 

    Jack hesitates. When Gil glances up in spite of himself, he sees him looking, chewing at his lip.

 

    “It was. Thanks. I… Do you want to go around again? Since we both seem to be stuck here…”

 

    “I’m not a little kid, Jack, you can’t hurt my feelings and distract me with a ride on a carousel. I’m older than you a little, even, you don’t have to patronize me.”

 

    “So act like it.” He groans. “Or-- Just-- I’m trying, okay? I don’t want to be _mean_ , I just can’t do this anymore, and you’re acting like this and you won’t yell or get mad, you just…”

 

    “Well do you want me to act like a grown-up or do you want me to yell and throw a tantrum? I’m letting you go, aren’t I?”

 

    “Adult, Gil, for, for f-- for pete’s sake, adults say ‘adult’, not… not ‘grown-up’.”

 

    “What’s it matter to you, anyway?” Gil snaps, he does snap, but it only makes him cry all over again. “You don’t have to deal with me, it doesn’t affect you if I’m weird or if I say the wrong things or do the wrong things or feel the wrong things. Is this what you wanted?”

 

    Jack sucks in a breath, wet and sniffly. Gil can just see him through the tears, standing by the other horse, half a step closer than he used to be, his mouth hanging open.

 

    “Gil… no. I-- I just can’t… I just need… I just thought we could have one more night and then we could say goodbye…”

 

    “Okay. So you said goodbye. What’s left to say?”

 

    “I-- I’ll miss you.” Jack ventures, taking another half step closer.

 

    Gil looks up again, sliding down from his mount to take a half step towards Jack. “You will?”

 

    “Of course. You… you were-- you’ve _been_ \-- Aw, Gil. It-- it won’t always feel like this, though. We’ll be okay.”

 

    They edge nearer to each other, bit by bit, until Jack thrusts his hand out for Gil to shake, with all the earnest clumsiness of a child. Or of a Gil.

 

    “G’bye, Jack.” Gil sniffles, taking it. He holds on a moment, grip tightening. “Jack?”

 

    “Yeah?”

 

    “You… you still… You’re going to be a journalist, right?”

 

    “Yeah.”

 

    He swallows, giving Jack’s hand one last firm shake before letting go. “Okay. Good luck. I-- I hope you get a job that makes you real happy.”

 

    “Good luck working for your dad.” Jack gives him a sad smile as their hands drop. “I-- I hope you take good care of yourself. Gil?”

 

    “Yeah?”

 

    “When I said we couldn’t do this anymore and you can’t, uh, uh, _call_ me? That doesn’t count for emergencies, that-- that’s just, we can’t see each other like we used to, but if you were in trouble and no one else could help you, or-- If you were ever in any kind of trouble and you needed someone to be able to come, uh, come to your rescue the next day or anything, that’s different. I’d still help you if you were in trouble, I’d always-- I mean I hope you, uh, just stay safe, but… but I’d always help you. If you were in real trouble, I would.”

 

    Gil opens his mouth to say thanks, only for Jack to flicker out of existence.

 

    The rain keeps falling just the same, and Gil pulls himself back up onto one of the carousel horses, to wait until he wakes as well.

 

    There’s a moment, when he does wake, where it all seems unreal, and then it crashes down on him and he bursts into tears. There’s nothing dignified or beautiful about them when they come, the way he imagines people in books cry sometimes when overcome with emotion. He’s read a few books where the characters weep manfully over loss or frustration, and he always imagines it to be so much nicer than the reality, at least his own reality. He blubbers and wails, and when he absentmindedly brings Jack’s bandana up to dry his tears, the realization sucker punches him in the bread basket all over again and he cries _harder_. He cries until he can hardly breathe through it and loud enough that his mother barges in to demand an explanation and to attempt offering comfort.

 

    Comfort was something she’d been good at when he was a kid who suffered from a lot of skinned knees and the general feeling that other kids were laughing at him more often than most kids got laughed at, but he can’t really explain what’s wrong, there’s no way for her to adequately soothe this hurt. The hole it seems it leaves in him when he thinks he won’t see Jack again. That if they dreamed each other by mistake they would have to just avoid each other, that if he found him on purpose Jack might be upset, that there wouldn’t be more kisses and adventures and adventures with kissing…

 

    It’s not even the kissing, although he’d liked kissing Jack a lot and had hoped to do a lot more. If Jack had said ‘we can only be normal friends now’ he might have been sad and hurt, but he would have accepted it gracefully. But to be nothing to each other! When Jack had been so much to him… to be nothing now, it hurts more than anything has ever hurt him.

 

    He knows it can’t be forever, that they _have_ to be in each other’s lives again, but that doesn’t make the hurt go away _now_.

 

    He spends the summer moping. He sleeps in short bursts and tries not to dream at all. He can’t read about psychic stuff without getting emotional. He can’t hardly listen to any songs without thinking about Jack. He frustrates his father, and he thinks he frustrates his mother, too, even though she’s generally more patient with him. _Babies him_ , according to his father.

 

    It’s a miserable summer, and it doesn’t feel much better when school starts. Jack isn’t in his classes, isn’t in his journalism program, goes to _another_ school, and Gil wouldn’t be surprised if Jack got in somewhere Gil didn’t have the grades for, Gil wasn’t really in advanced classes, outside of English, and he always felt like maybe that was a fluke. Not because his grades were poor or he didn’t do well enough, so much as he couldn’t really imagine himself actually being in an advanced placement course and it not being a mistake. But Jack had history as well as english, and was in higher maths, too, could be anywhere.

 

    He gets by. And it gets easier. He almost wishes it wouldn’t get easier. He keeps the bandana in the bottom of a drawer, packs it whenever he goes back and forth on weekends and holidays and over two summers, and he gets used to being lonely. He’s still sad, he’d think himself a very cold person if he wasn’t, knowing Jack half his whole life basically, and losing him. Well, close enough to half his life, even if at first they only saw each other every three years and so maybe it shouldn’t ‘count’, but Gil likes to imagine it counts. But a couple weeks into freshman year he started dreaming normally again, and a couple months and he started socializing normally and laughing with people now and then. Not dating, but… making friends. Maybe not very close friends, but still, people in his classes generally like him. It’s a whole other world from school as a kid or even high school, and he likes it, even if every day he wakes up feeling like he’s missing something important. He’s missing something important, but nothing he can’t get through his days without.

 

    And so freshman year passes, and sophomore year passes, and Gil moves off-campus into his first apartment. His father sets it up and his mother offers to come in and decorate, but Gil can do that fine on his own, kind of likes doing that. His skills in the kitchen are limited, knives and fire being chief among the things Gil knows he’s not to be trusted with, so it’s a lot of sandwiches and TV dinners and going to the deli on the corner, but getting the place cozy and livable is a nice distraction to occupy him, when he’s not working as an intern for his father.

 

    He makes curtains, and he picks out things to put on the walls and the shelves, and he knits an afghan square by square in his spare time. He feels like maybe he really is an adult. He has more optimistic days, even with the hole in his heart or his head where Jack used to slide in like they were made to fit.

   

    Maybe it isn’t school where he and Jack will find each other again, maybe it’s going to be out in the real world, he doesn’t know. But the ache sits less heavy on his heart even as the longing grows keener.

 

    He wakes up missing Jack most mornings, but never with weeping. He finds he can miss Jack and still be wildly hopeful for a good day to come. Which is the kind of day he’s having when Cal Martin yanks him aside between classes a week into junior year, about a non-class project.

 

    “Have you met Harrison?” Cal asks, and Gil shakes his head. “He transferred in this year, so I’m not surprised. Well you might have classes with him next semester, he’s studying journalism, too. I’ve got a class with him, he’s good. I thought if I could get you both on board we could get somewhere with this, but I haven’t talked to him about it yet.”

 

    “If you’re going to meet him, I can come along, I was just going to lunch anyway. You can explain it to both of us at once. I’ll do it!” Gil says, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as he walks along, struggling not to overtake Cal when he’s meant to be following him. Cal’s not even short, really.

 

    A project is what he needs, now that his apartment is set up, his internship is on hold until next summer, and classes have barely started up… he needs something to occupy his spare time, keep him moving and distracted and engaged. And he doesn’t even care what it is, he’s already excited! He just _knows_ it’s exactly what he needs, whatever it is.

 

    When they get to the room where this Harrison-whoever-he-is is, he’s lying across several chairs, so that he can get up underneath an old lithographic press to fix something. It reminds Gil of an auto mechanic, a bit. Except without one of those rolling things to lie on, he has a hard time safely re-emerging. Gil watches as he swings one long leg down from the chairs and tries to scoot himself free along them without falling or upsetting one chair in the row. He gets part of the way out and has to stop, nearly sending himself toppling, as Cal starts making his bid for this project of his.

 

    His chin comes into view, and his hands, and that along with the legs is really all Gil needs.

 

    “You’ve got a beauty mark.” He says dumbly.

 

    Jack emerges, blinking up at him, with a little awkward laugh. “Oh, uh… or a mole. I guess.”

 

    “Jack Harrison, Gil Turner. Gil Turner, Jack Harrison.”

 

    Gil goes to offer Jack a hand up, trips over his own feet, and has to be caught instead, Jack rising to keep him on his feet, the two of them leaned against the press.

 

    “ _Jack Harrison_.” Gil repeats, breathless. How had they never even bothered with last names, in all the time they’d known each other? He offers his hand, because as far as Cal thinks, they’re meeting for the first time and he had said he didn’t know any Harrison and Jack probably doesn’t want Gil to explain how they do know each other, so a handshake seems normal. A handshake is somewhat complicated by the fact that Jack is gripping his upper arms to keep him from sliding to the floor, but he gets his feet under him and Jack lets go just on one side to shake his hand.

 

    “Gil Turner.” Jack smiles. It’s warm and sweet, the smile he’s missed so much, and Jack… Jack is more a proper man, now, has always been handsome, but _wow_ … Jack looks at Gil like he’s some kind of anomaly, but not like he’s an unwelcome one. There’s none of the old familiarity, a distance that comes from breaking up, or from meeting unexpectedly outside of a dream, but he’s still warm, and Gil’s heart skips a beat or two and makes up for it by going doubletime. “It’s, uh, a pleasure.”

 

    “Is it?”

 

    “... Isn’t it?”

 

    “Oh, yes! I think so!” Gil nods emphatically. Jack slowly lets his hand drop from Gil’s arm, touching his waist briefly before he stops touching him completely.

 

    “Then we’re agreed. It’s a pleasure.”

 

    “Are you free for lunch?” Gil asks, cutting Cal off entirely. “Um, that is-- we were just going to discuss this project he’s got going and… Well, I was going to probably say yes to it, whatever it is, but he thought you’d be-- Well, can I, uh… Can we do lunch?”

 

    “We can do lunch.” Jack nods. Warm, and amused, and soft, and it feels so good just to be next to him again, to be looked at with that curious little smile, with no tight frowns or cringing back from touch, no ‘can’t’.

 

    Gil’s sure there are a lot of things they can’t do still, that the years haven’t changed, but Jack isn’t at all defensive at seeing him again, he’s just his own sweet self. And it’s the greatest feeling in the world to know that.


	5. An Accident Waiting to Happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> College adventures with Jack and Gil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my gosh this chapter is like... one third of the fic so far?? And that's just because I realized I could not possibly fit all of the college things into one chapter but anyway yeah. Here this all is.
> 
> There's run-ins with mild homophobia, which in one case ends in the homophobe being publicly humiliated and run out, but if you're sensitive to that, be aware.

_By undraped nymphs_

_I am not wooed;_

_I'd rather painters painted food._

-Ogden Nash

  


    Jack never mentions the dreams, and so Gil doesn’t mention them, just in case. He does a good job of pretending they never did know each other, certainly not intimately, but they get to be friends at least, and sometimes…

 

    Sometimes, Gil catches himself touching Jack-- he never means to! And it’s only his hand or his arm or his shoulder, and once it was his hair, he’d been so ready for Jack to tell him it wasn’t allowed, and instead Jack had just… smiled. Smiled like Gil was a little weird but mostly cute, like maybe he’d missed this so much that it was okay. And he usually does smile like that, when Gil realizes he’s been touching him as they talk. It… happens a lot more than he thought it would, as they work on Cal’s project, and Jack doesn’t say outright it’s okay to touch him, but he smiles so encouragingly whenever Gil pulls back worried, and he touches him back. He slings an arm around him sometimes when they’re walking and talking, and he fixes Gil’s collar whenever he’s wearing a shirt with a collar, or tucks the tags back in on his sweaters.

 

    Sometimes, Gil lets the tag stick out on purpose, if he notices it, just so that Jack might be the one to tuck it back in, nimble fingers warm against the back of Gil’s neck, stirring up memories. For the way Jack shakes his head and teases him gently over it when he does, and how sometimes, he straightens up the way the sweater sits on Gil’s shoulders, not because he needs to but just to do it.

 

    They eat lunch four days out of the week, one more day than they eat with Cal to work on his guerrilla news zine, and those solo Thursdays are Gil’s favorite day of the week, he looks forward to it more than the weekend. They talk about books or movies or music sometimes, or their classes. Sometimes they don’t seem to talk about anything much but they spend the whole time laughing.

 

    It’s on a Thursday that Jack shows up late, tense and tight and upset, and Gil had been trying to get rid of Wes and Joey for maybe ten minutes, without being rude, not wanting lunch with Jack to be a whole crowd, but he kind of just forgets about them completely when he does see him.

 

    “Jack! What’s wrong? Do you want some soup, I have soup, where’s your lunch?”

 

    “I’m going to be homeless.” Jack groans, dropping into his seat.

 

    “Of course you’re not!” Gil all but throws himself across the table to squeeze Jack’s hand. He pulls the thermos full of soup out of his bag and pushes it over to him. It’s been his usual habit since school resumed to smuggle about a dinner’s worth of food from the dining hall into his bag at lunchtime, to save his having to worry about how to feed himself that night, but he can get takeout or walk down to the deli tonight. He finds the rolls and the marshmallow square he’d shoved down there already, and the orange, sliding everything across the table for Jack.

 

    “I’m getting kicked out of my place, I’m going to… Where am I going to go?”

 

    “You can move in with me!”

 

    Jack looks up at him at that, snapped from his miserable fugue state. “With you? I-- Well… Will it be okay?”

 

    “Sure. If we don’t tell my dad, you won’t even have to pay rent, he doesn’t expect it. So you could live with me for free, you just have to be able to buy food. And, um, a bed, but we can worry about that-- I mean, well-- But it’ll be fine!”

 

    “No other roommates?”

 

    Gil shakes his head. “Of course if you need to move in today it’s going to be tricky, but I don’t mind spending the night on the couch until we can get a second bed moved in. I’ll just move my desk into my room…”

 

    “Wait, your parents are paying for you to live in a two bedroom apartment alone?” Wes goggles.

 

    “Oh-- Well-- is that… extravagant? It’s not a very _nice_ two bedroom apartment, it’s just what was available and conveniently located… I mean, it’s-- Well… Anyway, didn’t you guys have someplace to be?”

 

    “Yeah.” Jack nods. “Wow. Yeah. I thought-- I didn’t know where I was going to _go_. I-- Will you come with me after your last class today? Um, to-- to get my stuff? I’ll drive, and then… Well, I mean… Whatever you need me to do, for, uh… for things to work out, but-- Then you could show me where to go to get to your place.”

 

    “Sure thing, Jack. I can help you get your stuff together, if you want. Gosh, this’ll be-- I mean, I know it’s a hassle and all for you, but I’ll like living together.”

 

    “Thanks. And-- you don’t need to sleep on the couch.”

 

    “Oh, I don’t mind.”

 

    “Gil, you’re too tall to sleep on a couch.” Jack laughs softly.

 

    “Well, so’re you.”

   

    “I can make up a bed on the floor for now, and I guess I can use the money I’m not spending on rent to get a bed…”

 

    “If you’re sure, but I don’t mind you taking the bed tonight.”

 

    “No, I can’t do that to you. Not when you-- I mean, Gil, this is… this is huge to me, really.”

 

    “Well.” He blushes, shrugging.

 

    Jack looks down, suddenly noticing the pile of food that had been pushed towards him. “What’s this?”

 

    “Chicken noodle soup. Um, and just, lunch. You didn’t have lunch.”

 

    “... Oh.” He stares at the thermos, turning it over in his hands a moment, stunned, before flashing Gil a smile. “Thanks. Wait, what about you-- Wait… You have a lunch, where’d this come from?”

 

    “Oh, that’s my second, secret lunch for later. For dinner. It’s, I don’t really, I can’t cook? But then I thought, I could get food anywhere tonight, and you have got to eat, and now I was thinking, well, you and I ought to, maybe tonight I’d get a pizza? Sort of a… welcome home party? Well not a party, exactly, but I mean… a nice time? With pizza, if you want, or if you don’t want pizza, Chinese, or if you don’t want Chinese, there’s a deli--”

 

    “Gil. It’s okay. Pizza is fine.” Jack laughs, opening the thermos. Gil watches the way his hands linger in place during the task, the way he pours some out into the cap to sip at, neither of them having a spoon.

 

    “Okay. Good. Great.”

 

    “You really can’t cook?”

 

    Gil shrugs. “I’d have liked to have learned, but… putting me in charge of using a big knife or a stove burner is kind of asking for trouble. I’d have liked to have been able to take home ec back in high school and done cooking and sewing instead of wood and metal shop, shop’s an even bigger disaster than putting me in a kitchen. But since I never did learn I just… I mean I don’t even really like using the oven for TV dinners…”

 

    “Gil…” Jack shakes his head slowly. “Okay, it’s a good thing you’re moving me in, you… you really can’t live like this. You need someone to take care of you…”

 

    _I’ll take care of you_ , he doesn’t say, but Gil feels like it’s what he’s saying, and his chest feels tight and his head feels light.

 

    “Well, gosh, okay. I mean… if you want to.”

 

    “Clearly I _need_ to. Is there anything else you don’t know how to do?”

 

    “Oh, no, I mean I taught myself how to sew. I guess I kind of stab myself a lot, but--”

 

    “I mean important household things.”

 

    “Well-- I mean-- On weekends I take my laundry home, so that’s fine. And of course I don’t drive, but I don’t really need to…”

 

    “Oh, Gil… tell me your mother doesn’t still do your laundry.” Joey laughs, startling Gil. He’d kind of assumed Joey and Wes had gone...

 

    “Of course she doesn’t do my laundry, Rosie does.”

 

    “Who’s Rosie?” Joey asks.

 

    “Do you have a sister?” Wes says, at the same time. And also at the same time…

 

    “Do you have a _maid_?” Jack goggles.

 

    “A housekeeper, and _I_ don’t have a housekeeper, my parents do.” Gil folds his arms around himself a little, suddenly defensive. He hadn’t thought having a housekeeper was weird! And if it was, he’d have been made fun of for it all through school, except... he went to private schools... where all the kids had parents who had housekeepers. “It’s not any different from hiring anybody to do any other job. And she’s really good at housekeeping and she’s really nice. And she taught me how to do some things for myself when I moved out, and she didn’t have to-- only, not laundry, on account of I don’t have a washer-dryer at my apartment. And I used to babysit her kids sometimes.”

 

    “Someone trusted you with kids?”

 

    “Hey, I’m good with kids! Anyway, Wes, didn’t you have someplace else to be?”

 

    “I guess your dad’s paper does okay if you have a maid.” Joey says, like he hasn’t listened to a word Gil said.

 

    “Housekeeper. And I guess it does. Well, and my mom’s family has money I guess.” He shrugs. Mostly his mom’s family has money. He doesn’t know them as well as he knows his dad’s family, who are closer, who he sees more often, who seem more accessible somehow, but a couple times a year they spend a week or so in the Hamptons with his mom’s parents, and sometimes they come for short visits, meet them at the club for a meal and to talk about boring adult things and to comment on how Gil has grown-- well, when he leapt to five feet, and then six, that was most of what they had to say about him. Now, at six-four, he doubts he’s getting any taller.

 

    “What, like they’re rich?” Jack asks.

 

    “They’re comfortable.” Gil shrugs, and Jack lets out a whistle.

 

    “Oh, they’re _wealthy_.”

 

    “I don’t know. I mean… We don’t live like my grandparents live or anything. We just have a housekeeper who comes in three days a week, that’s all, and I used to babysit her kids sometimes.”

 

    “Hey, hey, I’m not making fun or anything.” Jack says. “It’s just… not something I expected to learn about a guy who smuggles a second, secret lunch out of the dining hall for dinner later.”

 

    “Well-- how much money my grandparents have _isn’t_ the same as how much money my parents have. And how much money my parents have _definitely_ isn’t the same as how much money I have. And if I call to ask for more, my dad will lecture me about fiscal responsibility, but I mean, you save a lot of money when you can just buy groceries and cook without burning the place down or something…”

 

    “Well… I think it’s about as easy to cook for two people as one.” Jack shrugs. “Gotta pay you for the free rent somehow, right?”

 

    “You don’t really. I mean, but it’s nice of you! I mean, I’d like that very much!”

 

    Jack smiles at him, and Gil can’t remember having been so happy in _years_.

 

    He goes with him to his old place, to help him pack his stuff into his car. There’s a guy sitting on the couch with two girls, and they look over at Gil curiously when he comes in with Jack.

 

    “Who’s your friend, Jack?” One of the girls asks, and there’s something in her tone Gil doesn’t really like, even though she doesn’t seem at all unfriendly-- or, not to him. She rises and sidles right up to him, getting between him and Jack on the way to Jack’s room. She puts a hand on Gil’s chest and he shoots Jack a panicked look, and he gets one right back.

 

    “This is Gil. Gil, this is Carol. And, um, Rog, and Shari. So you can move your sister in, Rog, I’ll be out of here as soon as we can get packed up, Gil’s got a spare room and no roommate.”

 

    “I’m Rog’s sister.” Carol says, continuing to lean into Gil’s personal space. “Are you and Jack close?”

 

    “Oh, I guess.” He says, unsure. How do you answer a question like that, about… well.

 

    “Not really.” Jack says at the same time, though he winces a little, apologetic, when Gil turns to look at him. “I’m going to start getting everything together.”

 

    “What do you know about him?” Carol asks, as Jack disappears into his room, and she’s way too close, close enough that he feels sweaty and uneasy. He backs up straight into the wall, laughing nervously, but she just follows, and Rog and Shari cast half-curious looks when he does, but mostly just go back to watching TV.

 

    “Oh, uh… lots of stuff?” He tries to scoot back from her. “Lots of stuff. I mean, I wouldn’t invite just any stranger to come and live with me or anything. We still have to, uh, we have to figure out some things, but I think it’ll be fine. Once we get the sleeping arrangements sorted out, then it’s all fine and dandy.”

 

    “What do you mean, figure out the sleeping arrangements?” She jumps on him-- almost literally.

 

    “Oh-- well, there’s only one bed right now. And I said I didn’t mind sleeping on the couch until we got another one, but Jack said he couldn’t let me do that--”

 

    “I’ll bet.” She laughs. Gil doesn’t see what’s so funny. “You know, you should be careful around Jack.”

 

    “What do you mean?” He frowns, removing her hand at last from his person, and not bothering to be particularly nice about it, either. “Jack’s the nicest guy I know.”

 

    “I mean, he’s not like us…” She says, leaning right back in.

 

    Gil is relieved when Jack comes out of his room struggling with one suitcase and two boxes, and he moves to take the case from him so that he can solidify his grasp on the stacked boxes.

 

    “Come on, I’ll help you load this stuff.” He says, frowning back over his shoulder. “How many trips do you think we’re making.”

 

    “Just a couple more, the drum kit’s gonna be the hardest part.”

 

    “You never mentioned the drums. You’ve never-- How long have you been playing?”

 

    “Since I was eighteen.” He shrugs. Gil figures that explains things, only Jack could have mentioned it when they talked about music over lunch. “Actually, um… I picked it up right after I turned eighteen.”

 

    “Yeah?”

 

    “Yeah. Well… I, uh-- I woke up the, the day after my birthday, just… just feeling kind of empty? I-- maybe this sounds stupid--”

 

    “I don’t think so. I woke up feeling that way.” Gil shakes his head, heart rate picking up.

 

    “And my parents tried to say everyone feels weird about growing up, but that wasn’t it. I mean… I’ve been prepared for growing up since I was a kid. I’ve just always been, I dunno, responsible for stuff a lot, and… and serious about my future, I guess. I was just… well, anyway. They said maybe I should spend the summer learning something new, and I, uh… I guess it was drums. Found a used kit and my parents just about had a fit when that was what I did with the birthday money my relatives sent, and they put an old mattress up against the door of my room and everything, but it, uh… it helped.”

 

    “That makes sense to me.” Gil nods, as they reach the car. He sets the suitcase down between his feet and takes the boxes, so that Jack can get the trunk open. “I mean… I felt better once I was doing my summer internship and fixing up the apartment and then when school started, just… having new stuff to do.”

 

    Jack smiles, getting things packed in and closing the trunk back up. “It was pretty good for working out frustration on. Anyway, if we break it down I think we can get it into the backseat, and then I can put a couple more boxes in the trunk and… you might have to hold a couple bags up front, is that okay?”

 

    “That’s fine, yeah.”

 

    “Cool, then we can get everything in one trip. I can just leave my key behind.”

 

    They get the drum kit packed up, Jack tucking the sticks into the breast pocket of his jacket. Gil privately thinks it looks kind of cool, though he’s not sure how to say as much. Jack flashes him a little smile anyway. There are a couple more bags, and then he has to box up his things from the kitchen, but it really does seem like they can cram everything Jack owns into his car. At least, everything he’d moved into the apartment, Gil imagines he might have things stashed at his parents’ place. Stuff he didn’t need but couldn’t toss.

 

    Carol waylays him yet again as they go back up for the last of the stuff from Jack’s room, and Gil squirms a little and tries to regain a little distance.

 

    “So Jack says you guys aren’t really that close. I guess you both just really needed a roommate, huh?” She asks, getting right up next to him.

 

    “We’re friends. And I don’t need a roommate, Jack needs an apartment and I have the space. We just aren’t telling my dad I’m moving someone in, ‘cause he pays for it, and then Jack can just… stay. Since it’s an emergency and all, and anyway it’s-- what?”

 

    “You’re just moving him in with you for free?”

 

    “Well… it’s an emergency, he said.” Gil frowns. “And the next three months are already paid up and it doesn’t make any difference really, so… why shouldn’t I?”

 

    Jack comes back out of his room with a bag slung over each shoulder and one last box of books, looking around between Gil and everyone staring at Gil.

 

    “... What?”

 

    “Jack, are you mooching off this guy?” Shari teases. “You’re just gonna sleep in his bed and you aren’t even paying rent? What’s your _friend_ get out of it?”

 

    “I’m not sleeping in his _bed_ , I’ll _get_ a bed. And I’m not mooching off of anyone, I’ve never mooched off of anyone, I’m just-- I’ll handle the groceries for a couple months and I’ll cook and do the cleaning.”

 

    “What, like you’re a housewife now?” Rog laughs.

 

    “I’m just pulling my weight.” Jack bristles, and Gil comes to relieve him of the box of books.

 

    “It’s not a big deal.” He adds. “Really.”

 

    Still, Jack takes the whole thing hard. Hard enough Gil can’t help fretting over it as Jack gets the car opened up again for this latest armload.

 

    “Jack… those guys… Well-- I guess-- I’m glad you don’t have to live with them anymore. They don’t seem very nice.”

 

    “It’s _not_ a big deal, like you said. I won’t have to deal with any of them or their dumb friends again once I’m moved out.” Jack says. And he doesn’t say ‘ _I don’t care about what a bunch of bigots think_ ’, but Gil kind of hears that anyway, and he remembers the way Carol had sidled up to him and whispered that little ‘Jack isn’t like us’.

 

    He reaches out without thinking about it, once he has Jack’s books stowed, wrapping a hand gently around his wrist. “Your roommate and his sister and their friends… do they have a problem with you because you’re Jewish? Because-- because I’ll start a fight with that guy!”

 

    Jack blinks, laughs, throws an arm around Gil and shakes his head. “No, no, I don’t think so. But… thanks. You don’t have to start a fight with Rog, it’s just… I don’t know how they-- _why_ they think I’m-- that I like-- that I’m not-- girls. Guys. That I’m-- That they _think_ I’m--”

 

    “Gay?” Gil ventures. Jack flinches a little, withdrawing, before he nods.

 

    “Rog is only really an asshole about it when there are other people around. He apologizes and everything, when it’s just the two of us. But then when Shari’s over or if Mark’s around, then… I dunno, I guess he feels like he has to if they’re gonna. I get it. Mark would be a real dick to him, too, if he went easy on me.”

 

    Gil feels a sudden flare of fury so strong that it overpowers the swirl of confusion that had taken him at learning what the problem really was-- if they could see Jack wasn’t straight, why would Carol not understand that Gil was, himself, very much not straight? But that doesn’t matter right now, right now what matters is that Gil is going to have some _words_ with Rog.

 

    When they head back up, Jack goes straight to get his things from the kitchen boxed up-- Gil had promised him in the car that he had plates and silverware and glasses, but not cookware, and Jack had gleefully informed him that he owned all the pots and pans in the apartment, so his roommates would be out of luck once he was gone. Gil goes straight to Rog.

 

    “Hey.” He says, drawing himself up to his full height. “I know what your little game is, and I don’t like it.”

 

    “What game?” Rog asks, glancing around uneasily.

 

    “How you’re all nice and sorry when you’re alone with him, but whenever anyone else is around, you turn on him? Well, I think you’re a creep, and I think Jack deserves a-- a hell of a lot better! You wouldn’t like it if I went and told him you liked guys, but you, you--”

 

    “Okay! Yeah, okay, it’s my fault, but it wasn’t supposed to get out of control, Mark and the guys weren’t supposed to hear about it, I just made up that rumor about Jack because he was going after Shari and I was going to ask her out, and I thought if I told her Jack was-- was funny like that, then she would pick me over him.”

 

    There’s a loud clang from the kitchen doorway.

 

    “What?” Jack asks, voice dangerous.

 

    Gil is a little surprised himself. He’d assumed Rog was trying to have his cake and eat it too, passing himself off as straight with everyone else by turning on Jack, and then buttering him up with apologies in private… but apparently he really is straight. Gil never really developed much ability to tell. It kind of never much mattered when he already knew who he belonged with…

 

    “Shit.” Rog groans. Then he glances over at Shari and Carol. “Sorry.”

 

    “You _ruined my life_ … because I asked a girl to dance at a party?” Jack steps around the box of pots and pans he’d dropped. “All you had to do… was tell me you liked her, but instead you started a rumor that has every single one of her friends treating me like I’ve got the plague, that got me kicked out of our apartment, and you could have stopped it at any moment? And you let all that happen? For a _girl_?”

 

    Gil picks up the box of cookware, moving to stand at Jack’s elbow. “Come on… let’s get out of here. Let’s go home. I mean-- we’ll get you settled in. And _you_ \-- you get this straightened out with your friends.”

 

    “You would have just backed off?”

 

    “There was nothing to back off _from_ , I asked her to dance once. I didn’t even know her. You-- you _asshole_! What the _fuck_?” Jack shouts, before sliding an apologetic look over to Gil, rather than the girls. “Pardon my french.”

 

    “I’m sorry, Jack.” Shari says, though she doesn’t get up from the couch or anything, either. “I only told those other girls because I thought it was true. I didn’t realize…”

 

    “Yeah, we’re sorry.” Carol bounces over to them. “Bygones?”

 

    “No.” Jack scowls, turning on his heel and heading back into the kitchen.

 

    “Well--” She turns to Gil, her hand moving to his arm, but this time he jerks back before she can make contact.

 

    “You’re not my type.” He says flatly, hugging the box of pots and pans a little tighter. “Why don’t you focus on cleaning up the mess you helped make before you ask if everything’s peachy?”

 

    Her mouth forms a silent little ‘oh’, and she drifts back over to the couch, folding her arms and looking over to the TV.

 

    When Jack comes back, Gil sticks close to him, and when Jack stops to leave his apartment key behind, Gil shifts the box around and holds it with one arm, gesturing to Rog to communicate that he is watching him, and plans on neither forgiving nor forgetting. He nearly drops the box, which damages the message a bit, but he recovers, following Jack on down to the car one last time.

 

    He gets himself buckled in, with Jack’s duffle bag at his feet and both of their bags of school stuff in his lap, and Jack gets himself situated, but doesn’t start the car for a long moment. Before Gil can ask if something’s wrong, Jack holds a hand out to him, their eyes meeting. Gil takes it, doesn’t know what else he could possibly do.

 

    “Look, Gil--” Jack starts, and then he stops himself with a sharp little intake of breath, with the tiniest shift of something across his expression and deep in his eyes. “Well-- uh… just, it was-- it was cool of you, to… to be ready to fight someone for me, I guess. You really don’t need to do that, but-- I mean, it’s cool you would have. So, thanks, I guess.”

 

    “If I ever do need to--” Gil leans in towards him a little.

 

    “Let’s save that for a real emergency, okay?” He smiles gently. “I don’t want you getting hurt or anything, if some guy was gonna start throwing punches or-- whatever happens in a fight. I’ve never been in a real fight.”

 

    “Neither have I, but I’ve gotten hurt before, so I figure I can take it.” He shrugs.

 

    Jack laughs, reaching over and tousling the front of Gil’s hair with his other hand. “Okay, slugger. If anyone starts hassling me, I’ll get you to walk me home at night.”

 

    “Well I might as well, now it’s the same home. I could walk with you anywhere, if-- if you ever needed me to. Someone might mess with just one of us, but who’s gonna mess with both of us?”

 

    “Nobody.” Jack smiles, wider and warmer. “That’s who. Hey, I-- I shouldn’t have said we weren’t really close. You, you’re a, a really good friend. I should have said that. I just-- the way she said ‘close’ and with everything I guess Rog said about me, I-- I didn’t want them to start giving you a hard time for being too close to me, or-- for things to get worse. The past couple months, you… um, you’ve actually gotten to be one of my better friends. Honestly-- not to get corny on you and I know maybe it’s weird-- maybe the best?”

 

    “I don’t think it’s weird, Jack. I mean-- you’re mine. Definitely. I think you know me better than anyone, I mean.”

 

    “You’re not an open book with everyone?”

 

    “I guess I am, mostly. But… there’s stuff about me I’ve only ever told you. And anyway, not everyone’s really interested.”

 

    Jack reaches up to fix Gil’s hair again, only to realize they’re still holding hands, and he pulls away-- though after a moment, he still turns back and fixes Gil’s hair, just a little, stiff with embarrassment.

 

    “Well. Um. Yeah. Let’s go, let’s-- Your place. Our-- our place?”

 

    “I should warn you, I’m a terrible navigator. Um, whenever I’m behind the wheel, I make wrong turns almost every turn. It’s really-- don’t get mad?”

 

    “I won’t get mad. It’s your apartment, you’ll get us there.” Jack smiles again, cuffing Gil’s shoulder gently. “Come on, I believe in you.”

 

    Somehow, Gil gets them there, and they only have to go around a block once.

 

    “I though you said you were bad at this.” Jack says, nudging at him again. “Come on, show me the place.”

 

    “I usually am!” Gil protests, but he gets an armload of bags and once Jack has a couple of boxes, he leads him up, showing him to the right place.

 

    He lets them in, and between the two of them, they get things sorted, moving Gil’s desk into his room, moving Jack’s things into the second bedroom. Gil gets his books off the shelves there so that Jack’s can go up, Jack gets the drum kit set up. It’s exhausting, and they still aren’t in agreement about the sleeping arrangements, but Jack cites further errands he needs to run before dinner, anyway.

 

    Everything’s arranged, everything’s nice, and there’s something comfortable in slipping the spare key onto Jack’s keyring and waving him off at the door, in sitting on the couch with a book knowing Jack is coming home to him. Home! Their home together, that’s all he’d wanted. Once he had realized Jack was it for him, he’d wanted little more than to have this… and to have it as friends, best friends, that’s as good as being a couple-- at least, he’d rather be Jack’s best friend and roommate than be a couple with anyone else and not be happy.

 

    When Jack comes home, it’s with a couple of bags of groceries and an army surplus cot, and Gil gets the food put away while Jack sets his bed up, non-perishables in with his cereal and such, the rest in the fridge.

 

    “What do you like on your pizza?” He asks, as Jack finally flops out on the sofa with a groan.

 

    “Oh, I dunno, anything I guess. Well-- not meat. Well-- anchovies are okay. What about you?”

   

    “Anything. Only-- not mushrooms. Or olives. Or anchovies. Uh… is plain cheese okay?”

 

    “Yeah.” Jack laughs. “I think that’s a good plan. What are you reading?”

 

    “Oh-- Lord of the Rings. Um-- it’s the third time I’ve-- I don’t know if you--”

 

    “I read it back in high school. My favorite was Samwise.” He smiles gently, and Gil leaves off the ordering of pizza for a moment, coming to sit with him.

 

    “Mine’s Frodo, probably. I mean, everyone, but… Frodo’s the ringbearer, and I figure that has to count for something.”

 

    “What? Frodo’s just… like, a guy!”

 

    “Sam’s just, like, a guy.” Gil counters.

 

    “Yeah, but-- he’s better than other people!”

 

    “Frodo resists the pull of the ring.”

 

    “Yeah, but he wouldn’t have made it without Samwise, who’s just… the best, most loyal person in Middle Earth, probably way more than anyone deserves.”

 

    “I dunno, I think he’s exactly the friend Frodo deserves.”

 

    “He’s the friend Frodo _needs_ , but I don’t know if that’s the same as _deserves_.”

 

    “Frodo’s really good and pure and he’s never gone on an adventure before and he’s afraid but he wants to do the right thing so much and he-- and he has this enormous thing and it makes him special in a way he never asked for, and it’s so big and it’s so scary, but he does his best. He volunteers for something hard just because he wants to make the world safer.”

 

    “Okay, but Samwise does all that, too, Sam’s never done adventuring stuff before. Sam’s not tempted by the ring at all, he only cares about Frodo and about helping him, keeping him safe and the world safe…”

 

    “I’m not saying Sam’s not great, but I mean, he’s like… a sidekick. Lots of perfectly fine people are sidekicks.” Gil says. “Frodo’s a normal guy who’s the hero of the whole thing, I think that’s… I dunno, isn’t it something?”

 

    “Sidekick, _sidekick_! Without Sam, Frodo would never have made it, though!”

 

    “Yeah, but that’s what sidekicks _do_!” Gil gestures wildly. “They make sure the hero can make it! I don’t think there’s any shame in it, I think that’s it’s own kind of important. I mean… everyone’s kind of a sidekick just because none of the others are the ringbearer, and it doesn’t matter how cool you are or how good you are at something sometimes, because maybe life makes you the sidekick. And that’s okay, I guess. But it’s… I think the reason it’s okay is, if the guy you’re a sidekick to is just… is really special. Not because he’s stronger or faster or smarter or better at anything than anybody. Just because he’s good and he cares. ‘Cause he’s a regular guy who wants to help and so you want to help him.”

 

    Jack looks at him a long moment, it’s that look that isn’t really a smile, the one where his brow furrows and it’s like he’s trying to figure something out, like he’s privately re-examining the question of why Gil is the way he is and he hasn’t gotten any farther than when they were teenagers, but maybe it’s a comfortable question to return to sometimes.

 

    “You make it sound… I don’t know.”

 

    “What, like, in a good way?”

 

    Jack nods. “Yeah. But I think all that same stuff is in Samwise.”

 

    “Sure. All that same stuff’s probably in a lot of people who never get to be the hero.”

 

    “Um… look, if I got worked up, or--”

 

    “No, no, I think-- I think it’s nice. I mean, that we can talk about books and stuff, and-- and that you’re passionate about stuff. And that you care about sticking up for the little guy. Even if sometimes the little guy is fictional. Anyway, I was going to order pizza.”

 

    “Cheese, right.” Jack smiles up at him when he stands, relaxes into the sofa like he’s always belonged there.

 

    In a way, Gil thinks, he has.

 

    The settling in is smooth. Jack cooks, does as much of the housework as Gil will let him-- and he’s a good cook. He makes pancakes on Saturday and again on Sunday, he makes stir fry for dinner once that Gil likes as much as he’s ever liked takeout. He makes pasta, he makes fish, he makes vegetable lasagnas that he sticks in the freezer for the future, on weekends. He preens at Gil’s enthusiastic praise, and offers to teach him, but accepts just having Gil sit in the kitchen watching eagerly without doing any work.

 

    Honestly, it’s about what Gil used to imagine being married would be like, back when he was a kid, except for Jack having his own bedroom-- and the lack of kissing. Still… when he looks at it that way, he has to say he’s happy with things. Happy to be the sole recipient of some of Jack’s most enigmatic smiles, and the person he touches the most-- sometimes, Jack grabs him for no reason, when they’re both at home, wrestles him a little bit and messes up his hair and then asks him what he wants to eat. It had confused him at first, only child that he is and without any experience roughhousing with schoolmates as a kid, but Jack is careful with him when he does it and Gil just likes to be close to him. And they don’t have classes together, but Jack does get the spot he’d been hoping for on the school’s paper. The arts beat, he’s assigned to cover the ballroom dancing classes’ road to some kind of tournament, and he takes Gil with him to handle the photography while he takes notes. It’s just little updates on their progress as they prepare, not so different from updates on the sports teams, but Gil likes sitting in on some of the classes.

 

    He takes the pictures he’s sent to get, though they don’t always use one, but mostly… Mostly, he just likes to watch Jack watch the dancers. The way he drums his fingers against his thighs when he isn’t note-taking, and moves his head with the music, always keeping time. The way he watches the steps so keenly. The way he smiles over this or that song.

 

    “Can you imagine doing all that?” Gil asks, one day. They’ve been following the ballroom tournament preparations for a solid month, and he’s no less in awe than on day one.

 

    “I think I could, actually.” Jack says.

 

    Gil doesn’t really doubt him. Not competition level, no, but he pays attention, and he has good rhythm. He dances in the kitchen sometimes, when he doesn’t know Gil is watching. He’s graceful, when he does. He’s beautiful.

 

    “That’s real easy for you to say.” One of the dancers sneers. “You couldn’t do what we do.”

 

    “I’m not claiming I’ll win any contests, but I can _dance_.”

 

    There’s some general scoffing, mostly from the handful of guys, though a few of the girls get in on it.

 

    “This ain’t the junior prom, honey.” One of them says-- Jeannie Owen, who Gil knows, sort of. They’d had a science class together, freshman year, and there are things he has yet to live down.

 

    “Five bucks says I can.” Jack stands.

 

    “Ten bucks says you stumble over anything more complex than the box step.” The first dancer comes right in close, and he’s a foot shorter than Jack, not exactly intimidating, but he does his best, anyway.

 

    “Fine, deal. You can pick my partner, I’ll dance with anyone.”

 

    Gil’s stomach churns. Jack has five dollars in his wallet, five dollars and ten cents exactly, though he’s not sure why he knows that. He knows he doesn’t have ten. And what if they chose one of the girls who was doing a more complicated routine, a more difficult style?

 

    Then Jeannie holds up a hand before her partner can name someone.

 

    “You’ll dance with anyone in this room?” She asks. “No tripping, no stumbling, no dropping your partner?”

 

    “I’m not going to drop my partner.”

   

    “Gil.” She says.

 

    “What?” Gil asks, uncomprehending.

 

    “What?” Jack asks, comprehending totally. “No-- I mean-- Gil’s a guy.”

 

    “Oh, me?”

 

    “Yeah. Gil. No tripping, no stumbling, no dropping.” Jeannie smiles. “If you can do that, ten bucks is yours.”

 

    “I mean-- he’s a _guy_.”

 

    “He’s a walking disaster. He’s the ultimate challenge.”

 

    “ _Jeannie_.” One of the girls hisses from the back of the group.

 

    “ _Katie_.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s true. He’s a menace, if Jack can dance with him, that’s actually worth ten dollars.”

 

    “Well I don’t mind if you lead, Jack, but I-- I’m not a very graceful person. If you don’t want-- I mean-- I would! But I guess, I mean, I’m not really an easy person to dance with, or… I wouldn’t want to cost you ten bucks.” Gil stammers. Ten bucks… they really can’t afford it. Well, Gil could make it work. Could call his dad or smuggle home food from the dining hall...

 

    Jack doesn’t quite look at him, doesn’t quite look at Jeannie. He doesn’t quite look at anyone or anything, but his jaw sets, and he shakes his head slightly.

 

    “No-- no, I can do it. If you’re ready to try.”

 

    “You know how clumsy I am…”

 

    “I know how good I am at catching you.” Jack flashes him a smile at last. He moves to stand in front of Gil’s chair, looks over his shoulder away from Gil even as he holds a hand out to him. “Put some music on.”

 

    The dancers clear the floor, moving to sit in chairs or on the floor, or to lean against the walls. The music starts up, sweeping, romantic, Gil slips his hand into Jack’s, Jack turns back towards him again, and suddenly he’s on his feet and in Jack’s arms. Jack’s hand at the small of his back, Jack’s shoulder under his hand, Jack, solid and reliable… all Gil has to do is move with him.

 

    Strangers in the Night, Jack absentmindedly singing along as he guides Gil through the steps, and Gil might not be graceful, but he finds it incredibly easy to follow Jack’s lead. It’s a little trickier if they have to separate, the closer they are the more he does what he has to. He doesn’t know _how_ he does what he has to. He just does. And every time he thinks he might stumble, Jack’s hand catches his, or wraps around his waist, or lands at the center of his back, sure and strong, and somehow he keeps his feet under him, somehow he… he glides along with Jack, manages not to upset them both as Jack moves around him.

 

    As far as Gil can tell, he picks out bits and pieces of the different routines they’ve watched take shape. At any given moment, he couldn’t say with any confidence if Jack was attempting the waltz or the foxtrot or the tango, only that Jack’s hands are on him or his arm around him, and that Jack is all he can focus on, Jack and the music, and the way his lips form the words even when he can’t devote any lungpower to singing along because he’s dancing. And Gil, Gil follows.

 

    This is the closest thing he can think of, to the feeling of sharing in Jack’s mind, of welcoming Jack into his. They’re so connected. It’s through their bodies this time, not like making out had been, which had kind of still been their brains anyway, their mental constructs of themselves, but this… He doesn’t have the words. They’re in sync, perfectly, and it’s as if he _is_ in Jack’s mind. As if here, in the waking world, he’s unlocked the secret to feeling Jack’s thoughts and desires, and that’s how he knows just what to do. With the slightest touch, Jack’s intentions flow into Gil, and Gil has never felt so _graceful_ awake as he does when Jack touches him and they move together.

 

    Gil _almost_ lands in a heap when he spins out of Jack’s arms, halfway across the room it seems like, but he catches himself, and Jack’s arm is stretched out towards him, both Jack’s arms are open wide, and for a moment Gil can’t, but Jack just nods, just smiles at him with that twinkle in his eye and an undeserved faith, and Gil _runs_ to him. Just… just _throws_ himself back into Jack’s arms, and Jack _dips_ him, and by all rights Gil thinks he should be ending up on the floor, since he hadn’t already, but it never happens. Jack just rights him again as the music trails away, and Gil can’t breathe.

 

    It’s a look he remembers with aching clarity, the look Jack gives him now. The way he swallows, the little muscle that leaps at his clenched jaw, the war behind his eyes between everything he wants and doesn’t want to want. He pulls away suddenly, running a hand through his hair with a nervous laugh.

 

    “Well, that’s enough of that! So that’s… We did pretty good, you think?”

 

    “Pay the man.” Jeannie shakes her head, as half the girls in the class surround Jack. “If he can dance with Gil Turner, he can dance with anything.”

 

    “I can dance with anything.” Another girl, a girl Gil doesn’t know, says-- from the vicinity of his left elbow, and he hadn’t noticed her sidling up to him when he’d returned to his chair to recover his camera. There are actually several girls surrounding him, and he looks helplessly to Jack, who seems a lot less upset by his own flock of admirers.

 

    “Oh. Uh. That’s very nice. That’s why you’re, haha, why you’re on the road to the championship, championship tournament-- _Jack_!”

 

    “I’m a little busy right now.”

 

    “I’m surrounded here!”

 

    Jack looks over at him, smothering a laugh. “I don’t see any problems. Rehearsal’s up, why don’t you find yourself a prettier dance partner for something a little more purely fun?”

 

    He turns back to the fawning women, and Gil’s stomach shrinks in on himself.

 

    “Yeah, why don’t you?” One of them, in his own little group, touches Gil’s arm. “You’re a lot smoother than I think we’ve been led to believe. If you ever need someone to go dancing with…”

 

    “Oh, I don’t really--”

 

    “What’s the matter, you’ve already got girls lined up around the block waiting on you?” She teases.

 

    “I definitely do not. I, uh-- see, the thing is, I’ve never-- I can’t-- What I can’t do is, I can’t _lead_ , so--”

 

    “I can take the lead, if that makes you more comfortable, cutie.”

 

    “IhavetogorightnowIthinkIhearmyeditorcallingbye _JA-ACK_!”

 

    Gil manages to extract himself, climbing over a chair and tripping over himself and nearly toppling over one of the male dancers whose partners had all, for some reason, flocked to Gil as well as Jack. He can’t blame them for flocking to Jack, who’s smooth and elegant and beautiful and who knows how to move, and who had at least been dancing the lead and could conceivably do the exact same thing with any of them, but why had any of them decided to surround Gil? It’s not that he thinks he’s without his charms. He looks okay, if a little dumb and goofy sometimes, but he doesn’t think it’s inconceivable that he should fall within someone’s type now and then, it’s just… all he’d done had been to hold onto Jack as much as possible and get all breathless and starry-eyed over him, and he’s not sure how anyone could miss that part… Maybe it’s for the best that they do, but he doesn’t understand how.

 

    “In a minute.” Jack promises, and he reaches past the crowd immediately surrounding him, to the girl who’d hovered on the outskirts. Over a foot shorter than he is, partnered with the short dancer who’d paid him the ten bucks over the bet. Not one of the lithe and model-pretty girls, more… more like in another ten years maybe you would call her a handsome woman, and in another twenty, the remains of one. Graceful, but heavyset, Jack’s physical opposite. He takes her hand and turns on a truly nauseating level of charm.

 

    Well, Gil feels nauseated, at least.

 

    “Katie, right?” Jack asks her, and then when she nods, he proceeds to sing a couple lines of something with her name in it, and Gil wishes the floor would swallow him when he does.

 

    She’s all blushes and giggles, anyway, as Jack works on making a date, and the other girls who’d pushed their way closer look on jealously, but not half so jealous as Gil, who’s tasted what they haven’t and lost it. How had he thought he could do this, how had he thought they could be just friends? How had he thought he could survive watching Jack pursue The Right Girl, which apparently is this one?

 

    “Meet you back at headquarters.” Gil says, waving the camera he’d recovered-- and managed not to land on, in his escape from the clutches of the amorous dancers.

 

    “Uh-huh, sure, see you then.” Jack doesn’t even look at him.

 

    What was he expecting? Jack told him when they broke up, if you could call it breaking up, when they’d only ever been what they’d been… He’d told him why, what it had to be like for him, he hadn’t left Gil with any illusions when he’d cut off contact between them and left that gaping void in Gil’s heart for the summer.

 

    He’d hoped maybe… Maybe when Jack had talked about waking up with that empty feeling the next day, that he might be open to the idea that he felt things for Gil that were more than only friendly. Maybe that was foolish of him, but Jack had said it was the day after his birthday, had said he felt empty after their breakup even if he hadn’t gone so far as to mention that detail out loud. And Jack talks about taking care of him sometimes with earnest affection, likes to make Gil’s favorite dishes from his repertoire. Likes to make up excuses to touch him without it being romantic, but maybe it wasn’t out of a longing for the touches they used to share, maybe it’s just…

 

    Gil doesn’t know. But he loves Jack, he can’t not love him. If he could stop those feelings, he’d have done it by now. All he can do is wait and watch Jack love somebody else… accept what he has as Jack’s best friend and let it hurt him. Maybe someday he’ll get used to it.

 

    He gets some generic shots of the campus, on his walk back, just to use up the roll so that he can develop it. The kinds of pictures they can run alongside any old story about student life. Once he’s back at the offices of the school paper, he gets to work on that, but it’s not much distraction. For all that his disastrous semester taking chemistry had gone poorly, he’s never had any mishaps with the chemical processing for film. He’s good at that-- had shown a couple of the guys how to doctor photos in the lab, too, something he’d learned at his father’s knee. The doctored photos in Sensation! didn’t always look good, were usually rush jobs, and the people who bought it weren’t looking to be discerning, anyway, but still, Gil knows how. And it’s sometimes useful, even though the school newspaper doesn’t need the same kind of photo doctoring. If some bozo walks into your shot and you need to remove a blurry arm or something, well, Gil Turner is your man.

 

    He’s in the darkroom when Jack does make it back, and it takes him long enough, not that Gil is done. Still, longer than it could have taken him.

 

    “Gil?” He calls.

 

    “Developing photographs!”

 

    “Well, can you leave them?” Jack’s voice comes from just the other side of the door this time.

 

    “In three minutes I can. Why?”

 

    “Gil, I’m not having this conversation through a door.” He sighs.

 

    Gil finishes up, ducking out of the darkroom quickly. He’d rushed through getting them all hanging up to drip dry at the end, but they’d had enough time in the bath. Barely looked at what he’d gotten. Jack is sitting on the table where everyone’s work so far is spread out, and he hops to his feet when Gil emerges, waving the ten dollars he’d-- they’d?-- won.

 

    “Can you _believe_ some idiot was willing to bet ten whole dollars on that?”

 

    “No.” Gil says. He can’t believe _Jack_ was that idiot, considering Jack doesn’t have ten dollars to his name-- or didn’t before-- and the five in his wallet to begin with was the week’s grocery shopping. He doesn’t love him any less, but it’s not a blind love.

 

    “Not a bad payday for humiliating ourselves, right? And the girls.” He elbows Gil. “I didn’t think I’d get that kind of attention. But I guess if you can dance, girls don’t really care if you’re handsome or not. Well, girls who really like dancing don’t, anyway.”

 

    “Did… did you just say you don’t think you’re handsome?” Gil’s brow furrows, and he stops in his tracks.

 

    “Yeah. Why?”

 

    “You know there’s a mirror in the apartment, right? You… you’re… you’re really handsome.” Gil can’t look at him when he says it. Not after everything, after the dance and then after Katie. “You’re… Out of every guy I know, you’re the most handsome. So it’s not a mystery that girls like you. Now that there are no rumors going around about you, you could have any girl you wanted.”

 

    “Oh.” Jack’s voice is soft, surprised. “What, um, really?”

 

    “Yeah. Really.” It comes out a little more irritated than he really means it to.

 

    “Oh. I didn’t use to be…”

 

    Gil’s not sure that’s true. Maybe once upon a time. They’d both been gawky and awkward at thirteen, but who isn’t? At sixteen Jack had been pretty, but still growing into himself. By eighteen he was pretty handsome. Maybe still kind of stick-thin, knobby knees and elbows and all angles, but his face had basically set its course for the very good-looking adult he was going to be.

 

    “Maybe you just didn’t notice. I mean… it happens gradually and you just… you see yourself every day and you never realize you grew up and you look good.”

 

    “Yeah. I guess so.” He says, and then he slings an arm around Gil’s shoulders as they walk. “Well. hey, c’mon. Dinner and a movie?”

 

    Gil’s irritation vanishes, along with ninety percent of his hurt. “Me?”

 

    “Yeah, you. I didn’t win this money alone, did I?”

 

    “I guess.” Gil shrugs, leaning in against him. “Thought you’d want to take that Katie girl out.”

 

    “Yeah. We’re gonna go out dancing this weekend.”

 

    “Oh.” His stomach sinks again. “Cool. She’s nice.”

 

    She is, or at least, she’d been nice enough to stick up for him a tiny bit.

 

    “You asked her because she’s nice, right? Not because she’s not as pretty as some girls and you thought you weren’t good-looking enough, but because you really like her?” Gil adds quickly. He may be jealous, may even be a little resentful, but he thinks she deserves better than to fall for Jack under any kind of false pretenses and to be hurt. He knows what it is to pine after him and know he can’t be the right kind of enough, he wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

 

    Jack shrugs. “I mean I could have asked any of the girls I was talking to. But… see, it’s like-- everyone says if you ask out a girl who’s not as pretty as any of her friends, she’s more likely to be _grateful_. That’s why every guy has been with Caroline Lawson?”

 

    Gil frowns. Caroline he knows. With the red hair and the freckles, and she writes about campus news, and he thinks she deserves better than for guys to use her just to get their rocks off. Anyway, if every guy has tried to get in her pants, she should be able to be a lot more picky.

 

    “Well, anyway,” Jack continues. “Cal says Katie’s not like that. So… it’s just going to be, you know, there’s no _expectations_.”

 

    “You don’t want to get laid?” Gil asks. He’s not sure he can take all the ups and downs his insides are going through over this conversation.

 

    Jack freezes up. “No! I mean of course I _want_ to, yeah! I mean I’m all… normal, sexually, I want to, sure. But you know… I can’t really… I don’t want the _distraction_ right now. Anyway I sleep on an army cot so if she wanted to come back to my place, I mean… It’s just way easier if we agree we only wanna go out and have a, have a good time dancing, and it’s not really about that.”

 

    “Oh. Great. I mean-- cool. You know, I mean-- whatever makes you happy. Hey-- Jack-- _you_ haven’t- with Caroline?”

 

    “No. But, uh, Caroline knows Carol, and so Caroline kind of thinks… stuff, about me, I think. Anyway, I’m not-- you know, I’m not, ha…”

 

    “Interested.” Gil nods. “No, me either.”

 

    Jack opens the passenger-side door for Gil, when they reach his car, and Gil is content to let him pick the movie, since he made the bet, and did most of the work, Gil thinks. He can’t imagine having done so well with anyone else, himself.

 

    Then, Jack picks a horror movie. Which, fine, okay. Nothing wrong with that. Gil is an adult, totally immune to plenty of spooky things. He hasn’t really watched a lot of horror movies, not current ones. He’d known better than to go and see Jaws, sure, but ‘They Came From Within’ sounds kind of hokey and dumb, and it’s a double-bill with something really unpleasant-sounding that Jack says they ought to skip out on anyway, but he can handle one dumb horror movie.

 

    “You wanna share a popcorn?” Jack offers. “You haven’t been to the movies since Three Days of the Condor, right?”

 

    “Yeah. I saw it three times.” Gil nods. “Um-- sure, if you want. Popcorn’s great.”

 

    “Well… this might not be suspense exactly, but I figure, you know… it ought to be good for a, for a thrill. Anyway, it’s what’s playing.”

 

    There’s a couple of options-- the heist movie that had been Jack’s first choice was sold out, the only other thing playing was a comedy he’d already seen.

 

    They settle into seats in the back, whispering to each other about potential dinner plans as the theater fills, with Jack pointing out that they could be spending two dollars and change each on dinner, if they wanted to go someplace a little nicer. Gil’s mother routinely went to places where you could spend upwards of two dollars on dinner, sure-- though his father was content with a seventy-five cent burger at his desk, and Gil tended to feel the same. Having to feed himself at college had drastically altered his standards in general.

 

    The idea of Jack taking him to a place nice enough to spend the remaining half of their winnings on, that’s a little dizzying. Having already spent the first half to take him to the movies, to split a popcorn between them… he knows Jack had said there were things they couldn’t have in the waking world, and things they couldn’t be to each other, but this feels so much like a date. A two-weeks-worth-of-groceries date! That’s… twenty-eight meals at home to this one night out together, between the two of them. If Jack was only feeding himself, he’d eat for a month on what he’s spending to take Gil out and show him a nice time, if that’s not a date, what is?

 

    “How scary do you think this is going to be?” Gil whispers, as the lights dim.

 

    “Why, you think you might need to hold my hand?” Jack nudges at him. “Should be fine. Look-- I mean, you, you could. Um, if that would help, or-- If it’s really that scary. You don’t like horror movies?”

 

    “Not really.”

 

    “You should have said. I could’ve watched Sunshine Boys again. I just thought you’d rather see something more exciting. You saw Three Days of the Condor three times.”

 

    “Yeah but there’s no monsters in it.”

 

    “Gil… monsters are fake and bad guys with guns are real.” Jack points out, and a girl a few seats down with her date shushes them, even though the movie hasn’t started yet.

 

    Gil shrugs. He’d gone three times for reasons which had nothing to do with the plot or how suspenseful it was or who had guns, but because-- complicated emotional attachments to Jack aside-- he would one hundred percent suck Robert Redford’s dick. He’d seen The Great Waldo Pepper three times, too, earlier in the year. He’d seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when he was fourteen and a crush had been formed which occupied some very formative years that he’d spent between dreams with Jack.

 

    ‘They Came From Within’ is unsettling off the bat. Before long, it becomes very clear to Gil that this is _not_ hokey. It’s terrible, horrible, visceral, disgusting. There is nothing Gil can think of that would terrify him more than this. The very idea of it would be nightmarish enough, but seeing it all…

 

    He tries just not looking, pretty early in, clinging onto Jack’s arm and hiding his face against his shoulder, literally shaking in his seat just from having to listen to the squelching and the moans. In his mind’s eye, he can still see too much. Bodies and fluids and horrible little parasitic creatures, and he can’t take it.

 

    He slips out as quietly and unobtrusively as he can, which is… not very, but he doesn’t disturb many people, with everyone keyed into the action on-screen. He’s still shaky, and even trying to get a drink of water just makes him gag. He can’t stop thinking about arms, reaching, grasping, grotesque invitations, the spreading infection, the poor protagonist struggling to avoid being ensnared…

 

    There’s a bench across from the drinking fountain, where he sits to wait out the rest of the movie-- a couple of times he can hear the audience react as one to some fresh horror and he winces and curls in on himself. He can’t help picturing the worst at each unified scream, and how much more movie is there to wait through?

 

    In the end, he doesn’t have to find out-- Jack comes and finds him after a couple of minutes, popcorn in hand.

 

    “Sorry-- I thought you were going to the bathroom.” He drops down onto the bench next to Gil, leaning in until their shoulders bump together. “Are you okay?”

 

    “I’m okay, if-- You can go back in and see the rest of the movie.”

 

    “I’d rather not.” Jack admits. He shifts, wrapping an arm around Gil. “Come on… I’ll see if we can get our money back. Spend five dollars each on dinner.”

 

    Gil has to suppress the urge to retch, at the thought of eating anything after all that. Jack chuckles weakly and lets his head fall against Gil’s.

 

    “Okay, okay, rain check. We’ll go out another time.” He promises, encouraging the comfortable closeness.

 

    Well, for a moment, at least.

 

    “Get a room, sickos.” Someone sneers, and Jack is suddenly outside of Gil’s bubble of personal space, though the tension pours off him in thick waves Gil can feel from where he is.

 

    “We’re not-- Don’t-- Don’t you start with him.” Jack says, on his feet between Gil and the stranger. Anxious as hell, and after what had happened with his old apartment and all, Gil can understand, but his voice doesn’t waver, even when he trips over his words, his voice doesn’t waver. “He’s just feeling a little queasy, he’s not-- Neither of us is… _sick_ , not the way you-- I don’t appreciate being called ‘sick’ just for looking out for a friend, and I don’t appreciate you slandering, slandering either of us, pal.”

 

    “Is there a problem here?” The manager comes out. Gil can’t tell if he’s seventeen or thirty, he has one of those faces that could be… anything.

 

    “Yeah, this guy is harassing my friend and I--”

   

    “Yeah, these guys are making out in the theater--”

 

    “We were not!” Gil yelps. He gets to his own feet slightly too fast, and his stomach lurches. Jack grabs for him to steer him over to the trash once he starts gagging, but in a moment which is at least a triumph as well as a deep embarrassment, Gil throws up on the stranger’s shoes.

 

    “I told you I was taking care of him because he was feeling sick.” Jack rubs at Gil’s back. “Hey, no, he started this, you don’t owe him an apology. Making things up about people… We weren’t doing anything wrong. We’ve never done anything wrong, have we?”

 

    Gil moans pitiably in agreement. It… it means something, he thinks, for Jack to say that. Even if what he means is that they’ve never used their bodies to physically make out even in private, it’s comforting to have Jack on his side, to think that maybe what he means is that _they_ were never wrong, only that the world is a dangerous place sometimes. Despite Gil’s complete disinterest in passing for straight, he’s never been hassled like this before-- he’s pretty sure that, in the absence of his sexually pursuing anybody, people see the way he avoids women as his being just a big kid. Well… that and a few other things about him, he guesses. It’s annoying, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth to correct people. He’s not good at being an adult yet, but he is one! He’s interested in adult things! Maybe he’s a little clumsy and credulous and it comes across a certain way, but…

 

    Well.

 

    “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The manager says-- not, as Gil had expected, to him, but to the ill-tempered stranger. Who is a little more ill-tempered now, but when he winds up to take a swing at Gil, the manager grabs him before he can, and Jack throws himself between them just in case, shouting, and Gil feels a little gratified, even if he mostly just feels gross.

 

    The manager brings him a little paper cup of water, once the other man has been removed.

 

    “Sorry, that guy is an asshole. I know I’m not supposed to say that about customers, but…”

 

    “Yeah? Does he accuse people minding their own business of-- of engaging in acts of public indecency on the regular?” Jack demands, still in a huff, arm protectively hovering around Gil’s shoulder as he slowly sips at his water. It’s easier when he has a cup, when he’s not leaning over the drinking fountain.

 

    “Well, he usually does other stuff, but yeah. He’s an asshole. Can I help you with anything?”

 

    “Yeah! We would like our money back, actually, some-- some guy in the lobby starts throwing around accusations and then he tries to hit my friend! Who’s only sick because the movie you’re showing is-- Look, I can handle a lot, but have you _seen_ it?”

 

    “Ohh, yeah… Did they warn you about that when you bought the ticket? Because we’ve been having some walk-outs and the box office is supposed to warn you. I can get you your refund. You might want to just… avoid the director in the future, if this one’s anything to go by.”

 

    Jack deflates a little, nodding, keeping his arm around Gil as they shuffle after the manager, to the nearest till. Mumbles his thanks, along with a repeated assertion that he hadn’t done anything wrong, keeping his arm around Gil all the while, and even as they walk out towards the car.

 

    “Sorry our night out isn’t exactly going as planned. I’ll make us something, okay? Something easy on the stomach. We’ll eat late.” He opens Gil’s car door for him again-- usually does, really. It’s gotten to the point Gil doesn’t bother even if he gets there first, unless he sees Jack going straight for the driver’s side.

 

    “It’s not your fault.” Gil shrugs, and he smiles when Jack offers him a hand.

 

    Jack closes the door once Gil’s limbs are all clear of it, comes around to slide into his own seat, not yet reaching for the belt or starting the engine. Instead, he turns to Gil, reaching over to gently push his hair back from his forehead.

 

    “You feeling okay? You need to sit still a minute before we start driving?”

 

    “No, I’m okay. I don’t think there’s anything left on my stomach anyway, but I-- I’m a lot better.”

 

    “Okay.” Jack smiles gently, that little ‘aren’t you cute’ smile he gets sometimes, even if he tries not to… “Good. You just lean back and close your eyes if that helps. I’ll get you home.”

 

    And again, _I’ll take care of you_ he doesn’t say, but Gil hears it.

 

    “That’s what you wanted me to not have to deal with?” He asks softly.

 

    “Oh-- like with back at the old apartment? Yeah. I-- People can be real assholes. And you-- you don’t deserve to deal with that.” Jack shakes his head, and his hand slips down from Gil’s hair to his cheek, resting there a moment. Soft.

 

    “Well, I mean, I guess maybe we look kind of like a couple together sometimes, or--” Gil starts, and he means it as a good thing, or… as a ‘maybe we should be together’ thing, except that’s not how Jack takes it. He pulls his hand back away, fast. “Oh-- But I didn’t mean you were doing anything wrong! Or that you should stop! I-- I think it’s really nice you always look out for me. I wouldn’t want you to think you couldn’t look out for me because of what someone might think, I mean-- I mean I know you--”

 

    “I don’t want you having to deal with guys like that. I mean I don’t want to deal with them either. But…” He sighs, hanging his head a moment. When he picks his head back up, it’s to sing a little, as he gets his seatbelt buckled. “Why do they think up stories that link my name with yours? Why do the neighbors gossip all day behind their doors? I have a way to prove what they say is quite untrue, here is the gist, a practical list of don’ts for you… Don’t throw bouquets at me, don’t please my folks too much. Don’t laugh at my jokes too much, people will say…”

 

    He trails off, turning his gaze firmly forward after catching Gil’s eye in just a fleeting moment.

 

    “You have a nice voice.” Gil buckles up, fumbling it a little.

 

    “Yeah, well-- Thanks, I mean.”

 

    “Took my mind off of parasites for a minute. Oh, now I’m thinking about them again…”

 

    “Gil, don’t-- don’t think about the parasites. Come on.”

 

    He twists around awkwardly, shifts so that his hip is under him, so that he’s half-sideways in his seat, cheek pressed into the headrest. “Well will you sing to me?”

 

    “How old are you, exactly?”

   

    “Twenty.”

 

    “No-- Gil, I know you’re-- I know how old you are.” Jack’s brow furrows a moment. “Will you, will you sit properly in your seat, I don’t want your neck snapping to the side if some asshole rear-ends us, will you-- Just, sit down normally and close your eyes and try not to think about that stupid movie, and I will sing to you. Deal?”

 

    Gil would much rather watch Jack, but it’s a fair point about sitting correctly, probably.

 

    “Okay, Jack.” He says, and he does exactly as he was told for his end of the bargain.

 

    “Good boy.” Jack says.

 

    He sings ‘Goodnight, My Someone’ and ‘’Til There Was You’, and ‘My Funny Valentine’ and then he thinks better of one from Oliver! about halfway through and sings ‘If I Loved You’ instead, and thinks better of that and goes through most of ‘Earth Angel’ and all of ‘In the Still of the Night’. And in the silent gaps between the songs, Gil listens to him breathe, listens to him as he thinks about what else he knows.

 

    “How do you feel about punk music?” Jack asks.

 

    “... I wouldn’t know.”

 

    “Okay. Well… sometime we’ll go listen to some and if you hate it we’ll just duck out early and go somewhere else.”

 

    “Go?”

 

    “Yeah. Go. Like… to a club where they play music? There’s-- I really like these guys who-- If we went into the big city over the weekend, I mean… could you crash with your folks? You could drop your laundry off and you and I could go out and see a show, if someone good is playing. A lot of these guys, you know, they aren’t on the radio or anything, they don’t have albums that college stations could play, but I figure if we went out, you could stay with your folks and I could stay with mine, and then we’d meet back up and drive home. But we’d be able to see some live music.”

 

    “Sure.” Gil smiles. “I’d like that.”

 

    He’s not thinking about the movie. When they get home, he sits in the kitchen and watches Jack make chicken soup with rice.

 

    “You know, my mother would say, if I really loved you, I would be doing this from scratch.” Jack says, as he pours the stock from carton to pot. “To which I say, if she’s so hypothetically concerned with how I feed you, I mean, she’s not the one with a full course load. And I didn’t start boiling down a chicken six hours ago, so this is just going to have to cut it.”

 

    Gil absorbs absolutely nothing after ‘loved’. _Loved_. Jack continues on like nothing, and Gil…

 

    If Jack loved him.

 

    Jack shoos him into the living room, tucks the afghan on the couch around him before bringing him his dinner, like he’d really been sick instead of just sick to his stomach, and Gil lets him. It feels so nice being coddled, how could he refuse? He feels cozy, and Jack keeps looking at him like maybe he could… maybe he could love him. Or maybe it’s never been ‘love’, not the same love Gil’s always felt for him, but like maybe it could be what it used to be again, when they used to practice kissing each other long past any real need for practice.

 

    They watch TV, and then Jack tells Gil to stay put and does the dishes alone even though Gil normally dries and puts everything away, and then they stay up a while studying side-by-side, take their turns in the bathroom.

 

    “Okay, goodnight.” Jack says, then stops when Gil just settles back down on the sofa with the late late show. “Gil?”

 

    “Goodnight, Jack.”

 

    “Gil… you’ve got a test in the morning, come on.”

 

    “Yeah, I will. Just, uh… after this.”

 

    “You don’t watch late night TV.” He sighs, coming back out to stand by the sofa. “Gil. Go to bed.”

 

    “I will.”

 

    “Will you?”

 

    He shrugs.

 

    “What are you afraid of?”

 

    “Women trying to have sex with me.”

 

    “Gil, the parasites in the movie are not real. I promise no women want to have sex with you. Wait, sorry, that came out-- I promise there are no sex zombies waiting to break down the door and have at you.”

 

    “No, yeah, but-- I mean, but girls are always touching on me!” He whines. “Your roommate’s sister and Linda who works at the movie theater some nights but not tonight at least, and the girls in the dance class, and one of the secretaries at my summer internship, and they all get real forward with me!”

 

    “Well of course girls are going to like you, Gil, you’re-- I mean-- You don’t like the attention?” Jack sits next to him.

 

    “No! Linda’s okay, she doesn’t touch on me, she just giggles to her girlfriend a lot and asks me if I’m at the movies alone again and tells me I oughta show up at the end of her shift if I want a date, and she teases me like I’m there to see her on purpose, but she’s not bad. But I don’t-- I don’t like being touched on.”

 

    “You let me touch you all the time.” Jack says, grappling Gil into something just a little more like an embrace than a wrestling hold, even if they pretend that’s not the case. “You like it, I thought.”

 

    “Well-- yeah, when _you_ do it, Jack. But I mean…”

 

    “But it’s different, right. Yeah. I guess it’s pretty different.” Jack lets him go slowly. “Okay. Go get your pillow and blankets, okay? Set up in here on the couch and you can fall asleep in front of the TV, maybe that’ll help. You can’t not sleep. But you can let the late, late show keep your mind off the movie long enough to fall asleep.”

 

    It sounds like a solid plan. Jack pats Gil’s leg and stands, going to his own room, and so Gil goes to gather together enough blankets to keep warm in the living room overnight. When he gets back, Jack is rearranging furniture, the coffee table scooted right up against the TV console and Jack’s cot in its old spot, right next to the couch. It’s low enough Gil could lie down and see the TV right past him.

 

    “Thought maybe a sleepover was in order.” He shrugs. “Okay?”

 

    “Yeah, great.” He flashes him a smile. “I’d like that. Thanks, Jack.”

 

    “Anytime.” Jack smiles, tucking himself in. “Just close your eyes and listen to the TV and try to relax. Hey… and look, next time-- I’ll try not to let any strange women grab at you, okay?”

 

    “Really? Thanks, Jack. You’re the best. Really, the best.”

 

    “I don’t mind.” He laughs softly. “More for me, right? G’night, Gil.”

 

    “N’night, Jack.”

 

    Gil turns the lamp off. He closes his eyes, and he listens to the late show, but then it goes off-air, and in the back of his head, the movie starts playing over again, the movie but worse, and with him in the middle of it.

 

    “Jack?” He whispers, desperate. Not loud enough to wake him, if he’s not awake, he hopes, and sort of doesn’t hope.

 

    “I’ll turn the TV off.” Jack mumbles. By the light of the ‘Off Air’ screen, Gil can see him roll out of bed and lean past the coffee table to switch it off. The buzz and the fade of the light to the dim, black screen, as Jack carefully returns to his cot…

 

    “Jack, I can’t sleep. I can’t turn off the terrible picture of it in my brain, Jack.”

 

    “Close your eyes. And picture anything else. I’ll be right here.”

 

    “Well, great, so if someone breaks in they’ll get us both.”

 

    “No one’s going to break in. Gil…” Jack sighs, takes a deep breath. “With so little to be sure of, if there’s anything at all... if there’s anything at all, I’m sure of here and now and us together. All I’ll ever be, I owe you, if there’s anything to be. Being sure enough of you, makes me sure enough of me. Thanks for everything we did, try to count some sheep, please try to get your ass to sleep… Nothing bad will happen, I’m too tired to make up rhymes. Or… keep the meter… Gil, go to sleep.”

 

The singing trails off into half-asleep mumbling, but… well, sweet of him to make the effort.

 

Every now and then, Jack snuffles out another half a lyric, though it isn’t always to the same song he used to be singing, and it definitely isn’t his best. It’s enough to send Gil to sleep without worries.

 

He wakes up with exactly one worry, after a couple hours of sleep, and that worry is that he might freeze to death, because the heating’s out.

 

“Jack-- Jack, wake up.” He falls out of bed-- well, couch-- reaching to shake Jack awake.

 

“No one’s coming to get you, Gil.” Jack whines, fumbling to grab onto Gil in return. He’s shivering. They both are.

 

“The heat’s out.”

 

“There’s n-- The heat’s out?” Jack blinks awake slowly, winding his arms around Gil a little more tightly. “I’ll talk to the landlord tomorrow-- shit, no, I’m not supposed to be living here. You’ll talk to the landlord in the morning-- Shit, you have-- Okay. You’ll call your father in the morning. We’ll go to school, he’ll talk to the landlord, you’ll take your test. Does the heat go out in your apartment a lot?”

 

“Only in the winter.”

 

“... Gil… No, nevermind. We have a plan in place, we-- It’s not even winter. Not really.” Another little whine. “I swear it wasn’t freezing when we went to sleep.”

 

“Yeah, but the heat worked then.”

 

“You have more blankets in your room?”

 

“Couple. Sheets. One of those scratchy blankets. One or two.”

 

“Okay. So here’s what we do. You go back to bed-- take the afghan, too. We each take a sheet and one blanket and wrap up completely, we pile the rest of them all on top, we’re in two separate little… human egg rolls, back to back, sharing all the warmth that the rest of the blankets trap. And we hang the afghan up over the curtain rod to insulate the room.”

 

“You’re real smart for three in the morning, Jack.” Gil sighs. “You really won’t mind sharing.”

 

“I’ll mind freezing. Look… it’s just until they get the heat fixed, right?”

 

“Right. It’s just-- practical. There’s enough room, and it-- well, I mean, it’s nicer than-- than not.”

 

Jack gets up, looking down at his cot. “Yeah. A lot nicer.”

 

In Gil’s room, he pulls out a plaid flannel pajama shirt, handing it off to Jack. It had been chilly enough when they’d turned in for Jack to go to bed in sweatpants, and he had his robe, but he just had a tee shirt under that and it hardly looks warm. Jack pauses a moment before struggling to get into the pajama shirt without fully removing the robe, and Gil gets himself carefully set up on his side of the bed, smiling to himself.

 

“Night, Jack.” He says, when he finally feels Jack crawl into their double-cocoon.

 

“Night, Gil. Again.” Jack says. And then, after enough pause that they’re both nearly asleep when he says it, he adds the two words that have Gil’s heart skipping a beat. “Sweet dreams.”


	6. Almost Home

_Though the grassy lawn be leather,_

_And prickly temper tug the tether,_

_Shall we postpone our love for weather?_

_If we must melt, let’s melt together!_

-Ogden Nash

 

    When Gil wakes, he and Jack are not two separate egg rolls nestled into the same cocoon, insides never to mingle. When Gil wakes, he’s under the covers completely, over-warm but happy, Jack’s heart beating under his ear. He has an arm around him, has his leg thrown across both of Jack’s, and Jack has an arm around Gil in return, a hand tangled in his hair.

 

    Gil doesn’t know what to do-- should he move away, pretend to be asleep still? He’s not sure how he got all un-wrapped-up, but he’s not surprised he did, not when he stops to think about it. He’s always tossed and turned at least a little bit even on the nights he gets the best rest. And Jack… well, he’s Gil’s true north, what else could have happened?

 

    He doesn’t want it to end before it has to. It’s been so long… it’s been so long since Jack’s just held him, just soft… since it hasn’t been a fleeting touch or the excuse of wrestling or winning a bet, just the two of them, and maybe it wasn’t on purpose, but maybe he has some pull of his own, maybe some part of Jack was only waiting for Gil to be here, like this.

 

    “Mm, hello…” Jack stretches a little, rolls over under him and tugs the blankets around, only to freeze up. “Oh… uh-- Sorry. Sorry, did I--? Gil, I’m sorry, I--”

 

    “No, no, it’s okay. I mean I’m… I’m on top of you.” Gil blinks at the sudden light when his head is uncovered. It’s so cold outside the blankets. He wants to stay in bed, with Jack, even without anything happening just to stay in bed with Jack, instead of facing an early freeze and an early test. “I should be sorry.”

 

    “Come on. How about we get breakfast out? Let’s not stay here any longer than we have to, until the heat’s back on. Even if the water heats up, I’m not stepping out of the shower into this, let’s… why don’t we, why don’t we go early and use the gym showers?”

 

    The gym showers are… very communal, in Gil’s experience. He’s taken free swimming the previous spring, he’s used those showers with other guys and only gotten through with his dignity intact because none of those other guys were Jack and so he didn’t especially care to look at more than he could see just in a swimsuit. If they got in just the two of them, it would certainly be weird to shower too close to each other, but would it be equally weird to shower on opposite sides? Would too much distance be suspicious? Then again, it’s not a secret that he’s interested, it’s not like he’s going to look, it’s just… it’s easy to not look at other people. With Jack, he has to do that thing where you really, really don’t look, he just knows.

 

    Would Jack want to treat it like a regular locker room thing, carry on a conversation and joke around the way guys tend to do, or would he rather keep their distance, keep quiet, treat it like separate showers at home? Each take a few quick minutes in there alone, while they were out of use? Or slip in with a group, if there is an early group? Then it wouldn’t be the two of them showering together. Or maybe he’s overthinking it.

 

    “Get up, get dressed, let’s get out of here-- wait-- call your dad first, about the heat, then we’ll get out.” Jack pats Gil’s back, before gently nudging him to get off.

 

    He does,blushing fiercely and trying to avoid unnecessary exposure of his half-hard condition. If there’s one thing he can say about the cold, it provides a helpfully inhospitable environment for erections. Jack is just staring up at the ceiling anyway. Somehow they manage to survive getting dressed, the phone call-- Gil leaves a message and hopes for the best-- and the drive to campus.

 

    “You know we can afford to buy fruit.” Jack whispers, watching Gil build a pyramid of tangerines on his tray in the dining hall.

 

    “Oh, can we? I mean, I’m not the guy who made a ten dollar bet yesterday, I guess if we can afford to do that, we can definitely afford to buy fruit.”

 

    “Won a ten dollar bet.” Jack fires back under his breath.

 

    “With five dollars in your pocket.”

 

    Jack opens his mouth, then shuts it again, ducking his head. “I guess I won’t do that again. Gil, c’mon, put some of those back, I’ll buy you fruit. I just-- I get sick of hearing ‘can’t’, you know?”

 

    “I know.” Gil bites his lip, meeting Jack’s eyes. He slips one tangerine onto Jack’s tray, and puts two more back in the basket. “I think I do.”

 

    “Can’t do this, can’t do that, not good enough for this, not trying hard enough for that, can’t _fix_ everything, can’t make a difference…” Jack bites at his own lip as he turns away. “I… I know I’m not as good as that guy at dancing, it wasn’t about that. But I know what I’m good at. And I can make a difference with what I’m good at-- I don’t mean dancing. I mean… You know?”

 

    “Oh.” Gil tries not to let his face fall too far. “Yeah. I mean, no. But I mean, yes. You’re good at a lot of things. I don’t-- I don’t think I know what I’m good at, maybe. I know what you mean about… when people say ‘can’t’ and you know it’s not true. Sometimes it’s just… it’s scary to change the world?”

 

    Jack smiles at him, that now-familiar smile that says ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about but it’s absolutely what I was thinking’.

 

    “You’re good at a lot of things.” He nudges at Gil. “You always talk like you’re so clumsy, you’re not. You’re really not.”

 

    “The first time we met was just ‘cause I fell down and you helped me.”

 

    Jack’s face spreads into a grin as he shakes his head. “We would have met each other anyway. Anybody can trip sometimes, but I mean… you were right there with me, winning that bet.”

 

    He puts a plate of pancakes on Gil’s tray, before Gil can get that far along the line, nudging his hair back from his face when Gil flashes him a grateful smile. They would have met anyway! Jack sounds so convinced-- and of course he’s right, if they hadn’t met as kids, they’d have met when Cal introduced them, but they wouldn’t have had half their lives together, only… did Jack mean he would have come up to Gil even if he hadn’t been sitting there crying? Does Jack believe they were destined to know each other, to be in each others’ lives? Gil thinks he believes that.

 

    “I’ve just always been clumsy. Well, except for when I’m asleep.”

 

    Jack laughs. “You’re not that clumsy. You’re really not. You get excited and you get nervous sometimes and you get in your head and trip yourself up, but it’s not you. You’re-- you’re fine. You know?”

 

    “No.” Gil grins, following Jack down to the coffee urns. Before he can reach for a cup, Jack is adding four packets of sugar and three creamers to the first mug he’s filled, placing it on Gil’s tray for him.

 

    “Well, you’re… you’re mostly fine.” He says. “Anyway… I did help you. That’s-- that’s what friends are for, right? So-- I mean, I don’t mind helping you. You really helped me when I needed it. So I think that’s-- But I don’t think you’re as clumsy as you say you are.”

 

    “Well I guess I don’t want to argue with you.”

 

    “That’s right, you don’t. Come on, let’s eat.”

 

    Gil trails after him, they find a seat with Cal and Wes and Joey, and Cal’s roommate Daniel, who Gil doesn’t know much about except he’s not studying journalism. They’re deep in some kind of conversation, debating the merits of women Gil doesn’t know, and so he focuses on his breakfast, tuning them out, feeling a little gratified when Jack shrugs off the opportunity to register an opinion of his own.

 

    He doesn’t really tune back in until Daniel mentions Deep Throat. Last year there had been a huge influx of students into the journalism program, after everything with Nixon, and Gil was never going to do anything else, but it had been exciting. For a little while, he’d kind of forgotten that he wasn’t really going to do anything like that…

 

    “We’re talking Watergate?” He asks.

 

    The guys laugh, and Gil turns to Jack, seeing that ‘oh, you’re cute’ look, and the way he has to fight off laughing with them.

 

    “Nah, forget about it. Just go back to your breakfast. You guys, come on.”

 

    “The movie.” Daniel says, and apparently it’s common knowledge, the way the guys all snicker over it, and over Gil not knowing.

 

    “Never seen it.” Gil shovels another bite of pancake into his mouth. “What’s it about?”

 

    “You guys, no.” Jack is definitely not laughing now.

 

    “It’s a blue movie.” Cal sighs.

 

    “You seriously… never even heard anything about it?” Joey asks him. “Seriously? This was like… all we talked about last year, how they used the name of a porno and it was in the papers and everything.”

 

    “Seriously.” Jack leans over, his hands covering Gil’s ears as Daniel launches into a summary of the movie.

 

    It does nothing to help.

 

    “Sounds a little weird to me.” Gil shakes his head. “It’s all just mouth stuff? I mean… wouldn’t you rather see it be the other way around? If you like women, I mean, wouldn’t you rather have it be about, you know… her, um, her stuff? I mean it sounds like you’re looking at a lot of, you know, guys.”

 

    “Yeah, but-- No, it’s about looking at the girl! You’re pretending you’re the guy, do you-- how do you not understand porn?”

 

    “I dunno, I’m just not interested in it, I guess.” Gil shrugs, taking another bite. “How am I supposed to pretend I’m the guy if he doesn’t look like me? Talk about a problem with willing suspension of disbelief, fellas, but…”

 

    Jack laughs, his knee nudging at Gil’s under the table.

 

    “I mean, you know?” He turns to him.

 

    “No.” He says, through the hand he has over his mouth, his shoulders still shaking.

 

    “Well, and like-- I dunno, it just seems like if what you’re interested in is just girls, you would want to watch stuff that’s… I mean, like… you know? Just about girls, I guess, or about doing stuff with girls that you can’t do with a guy.”

 

    “What do you mean stuff you can’t do with a guy?”

 

    “I mean everybody’s got a mouth. I just would have thought if this is some really popular adult movie it would be more about intercourse or looking at her business instead of a bunch of guys, but what do I know?”

 

    “You’re saying you wouldn’t want a blowjob?”

 

    “I didn’t say I wouldn’t want to! I said I didn’t want to see some girl giving another guy one.” Gil blushes.

 

    “You really don’t get… any of this, you should, we should take you out. Guys night, take this boy to his first porno!” Daniel goes from disgusted and confused to crowing in imagined triumph in an instant, though Wes and Cal both smack him for shouting the word ‘porno’ over breakfast. A pair of girls at another table pick up and move further away.

 

    “No thank you.”

 

    “Yeah, c’mon guys, Gil’s like… a big kid.” Cal says.

 

    “I’m not a _child_ , I understand how sex works. I’ve almost, you know--” His face heats even further, and he shrinks down in his seat. “I’ve _almost_. I just don’t care about looking at pictures.”

 

    “You’ve _almost_?” Joey teases.

 

    “Yeah, I’ve almost. We just didn’t go all the way, that’s all, it’s-- You know, it was high school.” He glances over at Jack, but only briefly, as he continues to shrink in on himself as much as all six feet four inches of him can shrink.

 

    “Haven’t been with anyone else the past couple years?” Jack’s voice is soft, his knee resting against Gil’s again.

 

    “No.”

 

    “Hey, that’s okay.” Jack’s arm comes to rest across the back of Gil’s chair. “Studying too hard-- ducking all those girls who’ve been chasing you around. Oh, you guys think I’m joking? You should’ve seen him yesterday. Fighting ‘em off just to get his work done.”

 

    “Yeah, right.”

 

    “No, really. Can’t go anywhere without girls falling over themselves for a piece of this guy.” And Jack reaches up and pinches Gil’s cheek, and Gil could just die, but he likes it, likes just having Jack reach for him in front of the guys. And there’s nothing romantic about it he guesses, but he’d worried Jack would never _want_ to, with how worried _he’s_ always been about how people see him.

 

    “Yeah, well.” He bats at Jack’s hand, because he thinks he’s supposed to not like it too much, grins when Jack pushes back at him and musses his hair. “They get on me sometimes, I guess.”

 

    “Then how come you’ve only ever ‘almost’?” Daniel laughs.

 

    “Lay off him, you guys.” Jack rises. “C’mon, you done? We gotta get over to the gym.”

 

    Gil gets to his feet, taking Jack’s tray and stacking it with his own, reallocating plates and mugs and flatware. He shakes his head before Jack can say he doesn’t need to. They’ve eaten together in the dining hall often enough he’d think Jack would just let him do it, but every time he at least starts to say Gil doesn’t need to. It feels fair to, when Jack is always grabbing things for him and taking care of him.

 

    “Guys’ night!” Daniel shouts after them.

 

    “You’re not even in classes with us, aren’t there econ majors you can go out with?” Jack calls back, his arm going around Gil’s shoulders.

 

    He leaves it there as they cross campus heading for the gym, as they’re quiet a while before he jostles Gil gently and asks if he’s okay.

 

    “I don’t really want to watch a blue movie with a bunch of people. Or… at all.”

 

    “Yeah, I know. We won’t go.”

 

    “You can if you want, I mean… if you like…” Gil shrugs, uneasy.

 

    “Nah. Kind of weird sitting in a theater with a bunch of people. You can’t really do anything about it, so what’s the point watching something that’s only got, uh, one kind of entertainment value, right?”

 

    “I just-- _You_ know. I don’t… I’m not interested in that stuff. It’s not like I never think about-- it’s not like I’m a _kid_! Just ‘cause I don’t want to watch some strangers up on a screen or look at a dirty magazine, it’s not… _I_ don’t think there’s anything so wrong with me. Jack-- and _you_ don’t think that, do you?”

 

    “No, I don’t.” He smiles gently, ruffling Gil’s hair. “You’re kind of like a kid sometimes, but not-- I mean, I think it’s-- Um, it’s okay to be sometimes, it doesn’t mean you’re always like a kid, or… like a kid in every way. It’s just… Maybe that’s what, um, what girls like about you.”

 

    “What do you mean?”

 

    “Well, you know… they probably think it’s cute. That you’re this, this big, tall guy who kind of needs to be looked after a little. I mean-- ‘cause girls like that, some girls do.”

 

    “Well I wish they wouldn’t. I’m as looked after a I need to be.”

 

    “You wouldn’t rather have a pretty girl do the job?” His arm relaxes back around Gil’s shoulders again. “I won’t be hurt.”

 

    “You know I wouldn’t.” Gil looks away. He doesn’t know what to do, what to say-- is he supposed to bring things up now? Does Jack want… anything?  How much is he allowed to talk about, when it comes to their past? How much is he allowed to offer? But Jack just tugs him in close, wrestling him around a little and laughing when Gil squirms and grabs on to wrestle back, both of their bags swinging around and unbalancing them.

 

    Gil winds up on the patch of lawn stretching along the side of the weightlifting gym, too stunned to do anything but let Jack pin him there. He thinks he ought to be hurt, he’s pretty familiar with falling on his ass, but he feels… fine. Fine enough to laugh along with Jack, to make a half-hearted attempt at not being pinned, as much as he does like it.

 

    “You got me.” He says at last, breathless.

 

    “Aw, you’re hardly trying.” Jack sits up. Gil’s half-hard, more than he usually gets when Jack grapples him, but then, Jack normally isn’t straddling him like this having taken him down to the ground, having pinned him back down in the soft grass, and it makes him think of that almost, of his eighteenth birthday and the way Jack had writhed against him…

 

    Jack shifts a little as he releases Gil’s wrists, shifts just enough that they _touch_ , and it sends a tingle through Gil, and all his body wants is for Jack to do it again, but then, his body is an idiot that doesn’t know it’s out in public on campus. He freezes, face flooding with heat and a look of acute embarrassment as Jack looks down at him, brow slightly furrowed.

 

    “Okay, I can explain--” Gil begins.

 

    “Gil…” Jack sighs, and the _disappointment_ is crushing. “I told you--”

 

    “I know, Jack, and I didn’t mean to, but then I was just--”

 

    “Uh-huh, force of habit?”

 

    “Well… a little.” He frowns, shoulders coming up about to his ears.

 

    “No more smuggling food out of the dining hall in your pockets.” Jack sighs. “I can take care of you. Okay?”

 

    Gil un-hunches, just a little. Smuggling… in his pockets. Jack thinks what he’d brushed up against was… Oh. Okay. Bullet dodged, then, he guesses.

 

    “Y-yeah. You-- you can take care of me.” He swallows. Thinks about Jack’s hand just barely touching him, Jack’s body pressed close to his own, thinks about the very concept of blowjobs, thinks about how badly he would love for Jack to take care of him now, if not out on the lawn in front of God and everybody. It’s not going to happen, but he imagines the showers empty and Jack… Jack pressing him back against the cold tiled wall and kissing him, and the more he tries not to think about it the more he seems to.

 

    “Come on, let’s start now, huh? Let’s get you up.” Jack says, interrupting Gil’s train of thought.

 

    “I’m up.”

 

    Jack laughs, practically picking Gil up and setting him on his feet. “Uh-huh, sure. There you go, there you are… You warm enough? I didn’t mean to get-- oh, the back of your coat’s soaked through, you should’ve said you were cold.”

 

    “I’m not cold.”

 

    “Come on, let’s warm up. Maybe it’ll dry out a little while we shower.”

 

    “Okay, Jack.”

 

    Gil lets Jack shepherd him in to the showers off the weightlifting gym, deserted at this hour, when the group of guys using the gym are in the middle of their workout. Jack takes Gil’s coat for him, hanging it up. They go through their bags, get their things, and Gil tries very hard not to look over towards Jack for any reason. He can hear him humming to himself as he undresses, hear him in the flip-flops dug out of his gym bag as he moves around, can hear the water starting up.

 

    For the second time this morning, Gil has the cold to be grateful for, as his erection withers in spite of an overactive imagination. When he does catch a glimpse of Jack, still careful not to let himself look down, to keep his peripheral vision above the waistline and not just his focus, it’s…

 

    There are things he knows, has known. That Jack has changed since they were sixteen. He’s seen him dressed, and he’s touched him. He’s been aware. Somehow he still hadn’t been prepared for this, for Jack’s chest, broader than it was in their youth, more muscled, for the way he’s filled out to fit the framework of his body better. For the dark hair, not too thick, but… thick enough. Enough to make Gil long to know how it would feel to touch him. To rest his cheek there, no shirt between them. To let his fingers play over Jack’s chest, to catch against the crisp curls… to know how coarse or how silky they’d feel exactly, to let them tickle his nose.

 

    “You thinking about something?” Jack asks, catching Gil frozen on his way to the showers. There’s no censure in his voice or his expression, no indication of his having a problem with Gil looking, and anyway, it’s only his chest and his shoulders. His arms a little. And it’s not the first time.

 

    “Oh-- no. Not anything important.” He hurries over to a spot of his own. “When’d you start working out, anyway?”

 

    “What, me?” Jack laughs-- Gil glances back over at him to see him flex, making a face like the idea is ridiculous, even though he has really nice arms, and Gil would know they were really nice even without seeing them like this, with how often Jack’s caught him. Even picked him up off the ground once or twice. “I guess around the same time I started playing the drums. Just… needed to keep busy that summer. Have a couple things to do that weren’t just college prep. I’m not, uh, not really… serious about it, ha… I just, it feels good to do a little now and then. I guess. Just to do something sometimes, work off some energy.”

 

    “Oh. Sure. Makes sense.” Gil says, though it doesn’t exactly. Well, needing to keep busy does, anyway. “You-- you look good. If that’s not weird.”

 

    “I guess I don’t mind weird. I mean… it’s nice of you to say.” Jack says, almost too soft to hear over the water. And Gil is careful about not looking, but he wonders if Jack is as careful in not looking at him.

 

    He doesn’t need to think about that. Just the idea of being _looked_ at, if it was Jack doing the looking… He adjusts the temperature of his shower down a little. Maybe they should have tried to get into the showers in a dorm building, where there are at least stalls. There’s no dividers in this one and it’s so hard to have to worry about not looking or to not think about being looked at, when every thought he has that involves Jack being wet and naked is doing things to him. They never got this far… they never looked at each other naked. They saw a lot of each other accidentally, but they didn’t _look._

 

    Anyway, even if the idea of getting an erection in the gym shower wasn’t mortifying, it’s not like he could jerk off in here. In part because Jack is right there-- _would he watch?_ \-- and in part because he thinks there’s a rule against it, and mostly because he’d fall asleep within ten minutes. He usually engages in a little self-gratification if he wants to be able to sleep, the terrible irony of not being able to sleep after that movie, when he doesn’t think he could have encouraged an erection no matter how hard he tried!

 

    The whole rest of the day, everything he does, Gil keeps finding his mind returning to that shower. To when they’d been drying off and dressing, when he had seen Jack with a towel around his waist, his curls still dripping wet… They used to be something, something they aren’t, and he doesn’t know how guilty he ought to feel, given their past, for looking just a moment or two at the breadth of Jack’s shoulders and his naked back. How warm his skin had looked, how much Gil had longed to kiss the back of his shoulder, and how his eyes had begun to follow the progress of one drop of water as it rolled down his spine. Towards the towel, and the last thing Gil needs to think about is what might be under that towel, but all day it’s what he thinks about.

 

    The heat isn’t back on when they get home, though there’s at least a message about getting it fixed soon. They eat dinner on the couch, shared blankets spread over their laps and draped around their shoulders, sitting pressed right up against each other.

 

    “So I’ve got that date tomorrow night…” Jack starts, and Gil’s stomach sinks, but he dutifully continues to eat his fish sticks and casserole. The fish sticks had been declared an acceptable emergency protein, the casserole had been one of those ‘make and stash in the freezer for later’ numbers, so despite having been out of the apartment most of the day Jack could still declare dinner a mostly homemade affair.

 

    “Yeah, I know.”

 

    “I’m going to set up the crock pot before bed, okay? All you have to do is help yourself when you want to eat tomorrow.”

 

    “Yeah, I know.” Gil says again.

 

    “Do you have to hang around here waiting for someone to fix the heat, or can you go someplace warm?”

 

    “No, they don’t have to come up to the apartment. It’s the whole building.”

 

    “Okay, good. Then if it’s cold like this again, you head to the library or go to a movie, stay warm.” Jack reaches up, his hand meeting Gil’s cheek in something between a pinch and a caress. “I don’t want you freezing on me. You can come back here for lunch if you don’t mind eating the same thing twice, I’ll make enough.”

 

    “Yeah, I know.”

 

    Jack usually does the same, for the weekends, makes four meals’ worth of stew or so to give himself half the weekend off, prep things to freeze with the other half of the weekend. It’s not exactly a surprise that he’d set up the same, for a day he’d be out. Gil doesn’t know whether to be glad to be taken care of anyway, or to wallow in his upset over the fact that Jack would be out with a girl.

 

    “What’s wrong?” Jack’s arm slides around him, tugging him in even closer. Jack’s forehead meets his temple, the two of them leaned in right together now.

 

    “Nothing. Just… It’s fine. It’s stupid.”

 

    “Okay...” Jack says, and his breath is so warm against Gil’s cheek. It would be so easy to turn his head and find Jack’s lips, it would be just like old times…

 

    Only Jack wouldn’t… He wouldn’t kiss Gil the way he used to, he wouldn’t be happy. He’d pull away, remind him he had a date, and then they maybe wouldn’t be able to be friends, not if Gil took all the trust Jack had put in him to be able to be just friends and threw it away like that. For what? For half a kiss, and then nothing. Then nothing ever again… Could they even still live together if he did that? Probably not, Jack’s already had to leave one home, where he couldn’t trust his housemates. Gil couldn’t betray his trust, after all that, force him into thinking he had to find someplace else…

 

    “Really. I’ll be fine.”

 

    “I know you will. Because if you weren’t, you’d tell me all about it. Wouldn’t you?”

 

    “I dunno. I guess-- if I thought there was something you could do to help, maybe…”

 

    “That’s what I’m here for.” Jack tilts up a little, nuzzling at Gil’s temple before drawing back, going from an arm gentle around his shoulders to wrestling him into a hold and mussing up his hair. “Now you’re okay?”

 

    “I’m okay!” Gil laughs, and it gives him an excuse to wrap his arms around Jack hard. There’s not much he can do to wrestle back, but… it’s an excuse just to spend a little more time holding on.

 

    “Okay, okay.” Jack laughs with him, and ruffles his hair and squeezes and sort of rocks him a little more before he lets him go. “I’m gonna go cook. You okay if I take one of these blankets?”

 

    “I’ll come with.” He nods. They each wrap one of the two shared blankets around themselves-- Jack stops before heading into the kitchen, fixing Gil’s hair from the mess he’d made of it.

 

    Gil settles into the corner near Jack’s workspace to watch him set up stew to go overnight, watches him pour in the eyeballed measures of barley and dried beans, the meat and potatoes, the salt and pepper. The secret ingredient-- which is ketchup, which Gil has watched him measure every week, and which he refers to as the secret ingredient every week.

 

    “How long have you been doing this?” Gil asks, leaning in to watch over his shoulder as he pours in enough water to cover. He always does it by eye, Gil has never seen him measure anything.

 

    “Oh… guess I’ve been helping in the kitchen since I was in high school. And then doing it all for myself since I moved out. But I tend to just make the same things over and over again… You’re not getting sick of anything yet, are you?”

 

    “Oh, no! I mean… it beats anything I’ve ever done for myself!” He shakes his head. “And I like it a lot! I kind of like having things be predictable sometimes. Not everything, but… like, routines at home. I figure there’s enough excitement out there, and if I was going to be chasing down stories and, you know, all that, well… isn’t it nice to come home and know what’s waiting for you?”

 

    “I guess.” Jack says, and his eyes meet Gil’s, and there’s an answer in them that rocks him hard.

 

    _Yes_. Jack doesn’t say. _You_.

 

    _You_. Gil thinks back, as hard as he can, and hopes Jack hears him.

 

    “I like it, anyway.” He says out loud. “I mean it’s not like you always do the same thing during the week, but I like that weekends are the same. I like that you make me pancakes.”

 

    “Well… making pancakes is fun, so...I figure that’s okay, right?” Jack smiles. “If I like making them and you like eating them. Weekends are meant to be _enjoyed_. And I enjoy making pancakes.”

 

    There’s a fuzzy little tingle, and it’s not like a voice Gil can hear, but it’s a warm, sweet feeling that sweeps over him and the idea that Jack enjoys taking care of him.

 

    “Someday…” Jack adds, reaching out and patting Gil’s side. “I might actually get something to stick to you.”

 

    “Sure. Someday.” Gil breaks into a grin, forgets all about Jack’s date at the thought of a someday. “Hey, Jack? You-- you’re staying with me again tonight, right?”

 

    “It’s about as cold as last night, I mean-- I probably should, if you’re offering.” He nods.

 

    “Yeah, of course. I mean-- you’d really be cold, and so would I! And-- well, I mean… you don’t snore or anything. And-- I mean, I didn’t think it was so bad waking up together. I mean I know it wasn’t how you wanted, but--”

 

    “It was fine. Go on, get ready, I’ll get the blankets back on the bed.”

 

    When Gil does get back to his room after getting through his evening routine, all the sheets and blankets are piled up together, and Jack shrugs awkwardly seeing him notice.

 

    “We might as well start out this way, right?” He says. “I mean… since last time we didn’t stay in our separate… I mean this way probably holds in more heat.”

 

    “Yeah, I think so.” Gil nods. “I was warm when we woke up.”

 

    “Great. Well, you tuck in, I’ll get ready. Um… you mind my borrowing that pajama shirt again?”

 

    “You can borrow the whole set if you want.”

 

    “Just the shirt’s fine. I’ll be back in a minute.”

 

    Gil just settles in to wait, and Jack gets ready for bed quickly, slips in next to him. It’s awkward for a moment, lying side by side, and Gil puts out the light and just listens to Jack breathing next to him.. No masturbating in order to get to sleep, but oh, just the idea… Lying next to Jack in the dark, he’d feel the way the movement of Gil’s hand moved the blankets, he’d hear the change in his breathing and the sound of skin against skin, he’d _know_ , and in reality Gil knows he’d tell him to knock it off and have some manners, but he can’t help just a moment of fantasy, that Jack would listen to him and feel something, that he would hear him do the same… even just that, even the two of them, alone but side by side… He should have done it in the bathroom while he was getting ready for bed, he should have just real fast to get it done with to sleep.

 

    Jack’s hand finds his, in the narrow space between them. He laces their fingers together and squeezes.

 

    “Don’t think so loud.” He says, voice warm and sleepy. “Okay? You’re fine… go to sleep.”

 

    “Can’t.” Gil says miserably. Jack just holding his hand is enough to make his arousal a little sharper, but he couldn’t take his hand away if he tried.

 

    “Really?” Jack sighs, like he’s put out by it, only he’s not. A thrill runs through him and into Gil, something light and giddy. Not like the arousal Gil has been grappling with-- _avoiding_ grappling with!-- but something… sweet. Innocent. Something so all-encompassingly warm that Gil doesn’t know what to do with himself but lie there and _ache_.

 

    “Sorry, Jack.”

 

    “Close your eyes.”

 

    “They’re closed.” Gil promises.

 

    “Keep them closed.” Jack orders, and then he sings, with that same soft warm-and-sleepy voice. ‘Never, My Love’, until Gil drifts off into sleep.

 

    Gil doesn’t dream with Jack, but he dreams about him. He understands why, when they were young, Jack didn’t like dreaming about not-real Gil-- it’s strange and empty, to have that version of him, incomplete, without his own thoughts.

 

    In the morning, Jack makes pancakes, and Gil sets up the coffee, and they eat breakfast as they’d eaten dinner the night before, huddled on the couch together wrapped in blankets, clutching their coffee mugs for dear life… They head out once there are places they can _go_ , Jack dropping Gil off at the library and heading off on his own.

 

    When Gil makes his way home around lunchtime, the heat is still out, but when he goes back home again for dinner, the apartment is almost comfortable. The apartment is almost comfortable, but Gil isn’t. He eats his dinner in front of the television-- something he’d never done before he and Jack had to eat huddled under blankets, even though in all the time he’d lived on his own, he could have done.

 

    How many ways has he simply never considered he could exercise his freedom as an adult? He can recall being a child and taking every given opportunity to go to his grandmother’s church, when she offered, not because he cared for it in any particular way, but because it meant not going to mass with his parents. For about the first ten years of his life, he hadn’t much cared either way, and then at some point he’d begun to pick up on a lot of ‘sin’ this and ‘Hell’ that and for the first time in his life-- perhaps the only time in his life-- he’d felt a real disagreement with his parents. Felt they’d chosen the wrong religious sect when they’d decided they ought to pick one and stick with it before marrying and having him. Not that he’d said a word of it to them. He went to Catholic schools, obediently trotted after them on any Sunday his grandmother wasn’t available to spare him from it, and by his first communion he had privately decided he was _not_ Catholic.

 

    But that had been his sole rebellion in life. He went to the college they picked, he lived where they set him up, he would someday work at what his father told him to, and he ate every meal at his little dining table, until Jack pointed out there was no earthly reason they had to, and once again, a brand new world was opened to him.

 

    Although… he would still finish out his degree at the school his parents chose, and work at Sensation!, and respond reflexively to a number of things in the way his parents would expect him to and not the way he’d like, and he’ll always be…

 

    He’ll always be just a little off from what he thinks he wants to be, because the only time he’s ever known what he wanted for himself was when he knew he would only ever be in love with Jack.

 

    And Jack is on a date.

 

    Gil turns off the TV and trudges back to his bedroom, where he guesses he should separate out Jack’s bedding, but he doesn’t. He makes a nest out of it all as if the heat was still off, and moves his record player within arm’s reach of the bed, and he listens to Dusty Springfield sing ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ over and over again.

 

    After half an hour of this, he cries. After three hours of it, his eyes are dry.

 

    “Oh, the heat’s back!” Jack’s voice drifts through the apartment, with the click of the front door. Gil emerges from his nest of misery in time to see Jack appear in the bedroom doorway. “How long have you had-- _Gil_ …”

 

    His easy smile falls away, and he kicks his shoes off in the hallway before coming to kneel on Gil’s bed, immediately combing his fingers through Gil’s hair.

 

    “Hi.” Gil croaks.

 

    “ _Gil_ , hey… hey…” Jack gathers him up into a hug, urging Gil’s head against his shoulder, and Gil allows himself to be moved. “What’s wrong?”

 

    “Nothing.”

 

    “Oh, ha, sure, nothing. Yes, this is all very ‘nothing’. Gil, c’mon. Now, what-- uh, what happened? I drop you off at the library and the next thing I know, you’re, you’re… Oh, look at you, you’re a _wreck_.”

 

    “I’m fine. Just hanging around.”

 

    But there are no other records removed from their place on the shelf, and he has a single on. While he could have flipped back and forth to the B-side-- and he didn’t-- it’s not like he’s been here with an album, he’s been here re-setting at most a couple of songs, and Jack might cover the entertainment beat for the campus newspaper, but he has the instincts of a real investigative journalist, he knows how to put together puzzle pieces. He can tell Gil has been crying. He can hopefully not tell that Gil has been trying to smell him on the blankets they’ve been sharing.

 

    “ _Talk_ to me.” He says, and when Gil doesn’t, he cups the back of his head in a sure and gentle hand, voice falling into a half-aimless tune. “Won’t you talk to me? I don’t care what you say…”

 

    Gil’s shoulders jerk, and Jack quiets. He squeezes him once, sighing.

 

    “Is it girl trouble?” He asks, after the silence has stretched on long enough, and Gil pulls away, naked hurt on his face.

 

    “Can we not?” He struggles against the urge to cry all over again. “Can we not pretend, because you _know_ I-- no. It’s not your problem, I’m not making this your problem.”

 

    “Okay.” Jack sighs, his hand on Gil’s knee now, bridging the new gulf between them. “Okay. You could. If you had to, I mean, you could, but I’m not going to make you talk.”

 

    “You _know_ I don’t have… girl trouble. Not like that.”

 

    “Gil, I’m sorry.” His other hand comes up, swiping at Gil’s cheek-- though he hasn’t started crying again, his face is dry. “Really.”

 

    “How was your date?” Gil asks, just wanting to move away from his own feelings. Or to poke at the wound, he supposes.

 

    Jack hesitates, then nods. “We had fun.”

 

    “Are you going to go out with her again? I mean… like, is she… do you like her?”

 

    “We’ll probably go out again. Once or twice. She’s a good dancer and she seems nice.” Jack smiles softly, and Gil can’t even look at that smile, it’s too lovestruck. “She says hi.”

 

    “To me?”

 

    “Yeah. She said she noticed both of us. Well… I mean, noticing us was kind of unavoidable. But I mean… you know. I just wanted someone I could go dancing with, and she wanted that too, but mostly she wanted, you know… She hoped one of us might ask her out mostly so she could make this other guy jealous. And I figure that’s okay.”

 

    “You do?”

 

    “Yeah. I mean it works for me. I just want to go out dancing once in a while. How about you?” Jack smooths over his hair. “You don’t want to talk about what’s wrong?”

 

    Gil shrugs. “Just being stupid, I guess.”

 

    “Okay, well… if you-- if you want, I could stay another night. I mean… the heat’s back, but if you just didn’t feel like being, you know, ah, alone tonight, I don’t mind.”

 

    “I’d like that.” He nods.

 

    “Okay. Go and get ready for bed, I’ll be right here. Or-- I mean, I’ll, uh, I’ll take my turn and come back, but… you know. I’ll stay.”

 

    Jack stays the next night as well-- Jack stays through the rest of the month, admitting that Gil’s bed is a lot nicer to sleep in than the cot.

 

    When the weather really does take a turn for the warmer, he moves back to his room, though there’s a reluctance that fills the apartment when he does. Gil’s bed feels cold and empty, and Jack’s mood dips. Sometimes he reaches out, sometimes they wrestle playfully in passing just because the nights have gotten so long now that they spend them alone, just because they need to touch sometimes.

 

    Jack goes out with girls sometimes. Comes home and pins Gil down on the couch until the loneliness lifts, ruffles his hair and releases him and they talk. And they go to bed, in their separate rooms-- Jack still hasn’t bought a real bed, and Gil wishes he could ask him to come back, and sleep with him again. Wishes he could cuddle up to him on the couch some nights, instead of just being roughhoused, and it’s not like it isn’t still very gentle roughhousing, Jack would never risk actually hurting him, he’s aware of that, of how careful Jack is with him.

 

    But it’s not the same as being held.

 

    Jack has a date with Caroline on Saturday, even though she was a friend of Carol’s. He’d spent the tail end of winter and then the spring taking all of the girls from the ballroom dancing class out, just once or twice each, and now Caroline…

 

    Gil can’t stand it. Jack always just comes home, after going dancing with the ballroom dancing girls. It’s about the activity, he guesses. But he knows what the activity is with Caroline, and it makes his stomach sour.

 

    The tournament goes fine, though Gil cares less about covering it, by the end. Jack does his share of the writing, but it always feels like Gil is there paying attention and taking pictures while Jack flirts with different girls…

 

    He’s happier when they cover the jazz band and chorale rehearsal, to write something up about an upcoming performance. They’re there early on Friday, just a little more than a week ahead of the concert. It’s all fine. Jack seems to enjoy the music, and Gil thinks they do a good job, the girl doing a solo performance of Love, Look Away is very good…

 

    And then he turns to whisper as much to Jack, and he sees the tears streaming down his face, and he doesn’t know what to _do_. He turns back to the stage, and he holds very still as he listens to Jack sniff, as he feels the shifting of the air between them when Jack wipes at his face. He pretends to be too caught up in the rehearsal to notice, because he doesn’t think Jack would like him to. Maybe in a dream he wouldn’t mind being petted at and soothed over a few tears, but out in the waking world, he’s too self-conscious, too defensive. He just says she was very good, when Gil asks what he thought of the show as a whole.

 

    Late that afternoon, and Jack is in the kitchen, has been since he got home, cooking, humming to himself. He likes to get dinner done early and it works with his schedule, but it’s not important if they eat late. Gil is used to the routine, and to the occasional breaks.

 

    When Gil comes into the kitchen to check in on things, Jack holds out a hand, mid-hum, and Gil doesn’t hesitate a second before taking it, letting Jack pull him in close to dance-- not like they had for the bet, not in their kitchen, but it’s so nice just to be in Jack’s arms again.

 

    “Thrill me, thrill me, walk me down the lane where shadows will be, will be… hiding lovers just the same as we’ll be, we’ll be, when you make me tell you I love you…” Jack croons, holds Gil so close, and it’s their song, their song, the night they almost…

 

    Gil’s heart stops, or maybe it starts for the first time in years. And when Jack sings ‘when you take me in your arms and drive me slowly out of my mind’, there’s absolutely nothing he isn’t ready to do, the memory of the warmth of Jack’s body, or at least the mental construct thereof, but it was Jack, on top of him, their hips rocking together, their mouths…

 

    Jack sings ‘kiss me’, and Gil echoes it, with a breathless desperation, and then Jack _does_.

 

    They aren’t dancing anymore, they’re just a tangle of arms and hands and lips, and Gil moans, and suddenly they aren’t a tangle anymore, either.

 

    “Jack, wait--”

 

    “Fuck, _fuck_ , Gil, I’m, I’m so sorry--”

 

    “No, don’t be!” He reaches out, stops himself. Jack is out to the living room already, and Jack has put the couch between them, and Gil doesn’t know what to feel.

 

    “No, I-- I shouldn’t have done that, you didn’t-- I shouldn’t have, I _grabbed_ you…”

 

    “I wanted you to!”

 

    “I need a, I need a, I need a minute…”

 

    Jack disappears into his room, and Gil collapses to the sofa with a heavy sigh. He doesn’t want Jack to be _sorry_ , he wants Jack to do it again, and then never stop doing it, but he knows… he knows Jack never wanted this to cross over into the waking world. He knows how Jack had struggled with rumors, how he’d hated that guy coming after them at the movies. How when he was a kid, they’d made him wear a dress for his class play and made fun of him for it, and maybe that was related… He’s so sensitive to the court of public opinion, so worried all the time.

 

    _Afraid_ , Gil realizes, has a sudden understanding of the fear Jack lives with every day that he never lets anyone see. It isn’t all about being gay, he doesn’t think, but he’s afraid of people. He likes people so much, he cares so much about everyone, but he’s also so afraid… But there’s nothing Gil can do about that, if Jack won’t talk to him.

 

    Gil curls up on his side on the sofa moping for about twenty minutes, before Jack bursts out of his room and runs past him to the kitchen.

 

    “Dammit…” He groans, and Gil doesn’t smell smoke, but he smells something a little charred. “How do you feel about pizza?”

 

    “I feel okay about pizza. How-- how do you feel about… me?”

 

    Jack comes into the room, kneeling by the couch where Gil is still lying on his side. He reaches up, tentative as his hand finds Gil’s cheek.

 

    “Gil… You wanted me to?”

 

    “Of course I did.”

 

    Jack sighs, his eyes falling closed, his hand still on Gil’s cheek. “Sit up, okay?”

 

    Gil does, once Jack’s hand has dropped from his face, and Jack joins him on the couch. He reaches for him, more hesitant than he’s ever been as he winds his arms around Gil and draws him in for a slow and gentle kiss.

 

    “You want me to?” He whispers again, their lips still touching.

 

    “Always.”

 

    “I-- I can’t… We shouldn’t…” Jack’s hands slide up into Gil’s hair, massage at his scalp. “Gil, I-- I--”

 

    “Please… Jack, please… no one’s ever going to know, it’s our apartment, no one’s ever known about anything else we do. No one ever knew we shared my bed, no one would know about this. Jack, you’ll be safe here, I promise. I promise, I-- It’s safe.”

 

    “I can’t give you things… We can’t date.”

 

    Gil doesn’t mention that Jack had wanted to spend all of ten dollars on taking Gil out to dinner and a movie once, or that they have a standing lunch date every Thursday, or that Jack gives him so many things. He just kisses him, softly, and lets Jack take it from there.

 

    Jack pulls Gil into his lap before kissing back, kissing deeply, and this time when Gil moans, Jack does the same, one hand still gripping at his hip, the other returning to bury in his hair again.

 

    “Take me to bed…” Gil gasps. Bed, he needs to be in bed, there’s no _room_ here. His knees hit the back of the couch and he can’t get _close_ enough to Jack, can’t fit up against him the way he wants to, way he needs to.

 

    “What?”

 

    “Take me to bed, Jack, I’m ready…”

 

    “Gil… Gil, when did this--?”

 

    “Ever since you kissed me, I’ve just been… just been waiting for this.”

 

    “That hasn’t been very long…”

 

    “The _first_ time you kissed me.” Gil laughs softly, and kisses Jack again. “I always knew it would be you, though, I knew… deep down I think I knew, when we met, I knew it would always be you…”

 

    Jack cups his cheek and eases him back, and looks up at him in wonder. “Me?”

 

    “Yes.”

 

    “Oh, Gil…” He kisses him again, his other cheek, his neck. “Gil, Gil, Gil… me?”

 

    “It was always you.”

 

    “Gil, I’m so sorry.” He holds him tight, his face buried in Gil’s throat. “It was _me_ , Gil, I’m sorry…”

 

    “What do you have to be sorry for?” He plays with Jack’s hair, letting the curls wind around his fingers. Thick and silky… he’d very much like Jack to take him to bed and get a lot closer to him, but he could be content playing with his hair until then, feeling his breath, the strength of his arms…

 

    “You cried over me. I didn’t know.”

 

    “How could you not know?”

 

    “Because I’m a fool.” Jack sighs, nuzzling in even tighter. “Always? Me?”

 

    “Who else?” He laughs gently, kissing Jack’s temple. “I love you, Jack.”

 

    “Gil…”

 

    “I know, you can’t. You-- you’re going to marry the right girl someday, and-- I know. But… until then, couldn’t we?”

 

    “Feels like I’m just using you…”

 

    “Jack… I understand. But… as long as we’re sharing a bed and you don’t have a serious girlfriend or anything, isn’t it okay? You’re not using me, I know what the deal is. But… I just-- I’ve never been with anybody. And I don’t want to be with anybody but you. And when I’m with you I think… I want to be with you, even just once, like… like that.”

 

    “I’ve never, either.” Jack admits, voice soft.

 

    “Not with any of the girls you’ve gone out with?”

 

    “It’s not really why I go out. I don’t go out for that… I-- I don’t know. I just… I always guess, uh, I guess I figured I’d… when the time was right, or when the person was right, I’d feel different. I don’t feel anything about those girls.”

 

    “What do you feel about me?”

 

    Jack looks at Gil’s lips, and then looks away. “I don’t know. I can’t… I can’t feel like this about you, that’s all, I just-- I’ve got plans, and… and I don’t want either of us to have to deal with all the things you have to worry about, how people are going to be about it, if-- It’s dangerous, and… it’s not always going to be as easy as the movie theater, especially if it’s real.”

 

    “But-- but you do? You want it?”

 

    “It doesn’t matter what I want.” He touches Gil’s cheek. “I’m trying to protect both of us, okay? And you make it so _hard_ sometimes.”

 

    “ _You_ make it hard sometimes.” Gil says, and Jack groans and pulls him in for a hard hug.

 

    “I don’t know what you’d do if I wasn’t taking care of you, I really don’t. I don’t like to think about it…”

 

    “If you weren’t taking care of me, I guess I’d just never do it with anyone. It’s just-- everything’s different with you, and I _want_ you. And I mean, I’ve liked other guys okay before and I think other guys are handsome, too, but I don’t… I don’t want anyone else the way I want you.”

 

    Jack groans again, low, his lips against Gil’s ear.

 

    “Really?” He whispers.

 

    “Just you and Robert Redford. And… Richard Chamberlain, in a dream once. But I mean that was just a-- you know, I was thirteen and it wasn’t like… you know. It wasn’t about wanting to so much as it just happened a lot anyway, and I didn’t even really dream anything happened, and it definitely wasn’t like the dreams with you.”

 

    “Like the dreams with me, huh?” And Jack’s voice is warmer, and he relaxes into it, holding Gil close, nuzzling at him. “Well… if it’s just me… I mean, ah, I don’t think-- no offense-- that you’ve got a whole lot of a chance at Robert Redford, so I mean-- maybe we should. It can’t be-- This doesn’t leave the apartment, we’re not-- When we go outside, we’re just friends.”

 

    “I understand.”

 

    “But… we both want to do it, and no one can ever know, know what we do here, alone, no one can-- We act the same as always whenever we’re out. We’re not, this isn’t… this can’t be love. But I-- I should take care of you, right?”

 

    “ _Please_ …”

 

    “Gil…” Jack’s fingers stroke along his cheek, his jaw, down the side of his neck, and in their wake he tingles and he melts. “When you first… first brought me home, I did want to, I did. I wanted to touch you, I-- I wanted you. But I thought… You did so much for me, and you’re always, you’ve always been so sweet… and I was afraid if I-- I was afraid you would let me take advantage of you. You know? Take advantage of you, and… There’s stuff I just can’t give, I can’t promise you things, and I don’t want to-- to fuck it all up…”

 

    “I know what you can’t do… I understand.” Gil turns, kissing Jack’s cheek, seeking out his lips. “I do, I understand, I do… but I’m yours, Jack, and I won’t ask for much…”

 

    Jack groans into the crook of Gil’s neck, one hand sliding down to grip at his thigh, he leans up into him, presses as close as it’s possible to press in the position they’re in, and there’s so much want and so much _frustration_ in the little gaps of space between them. Desire and indecision and guilt, so tangible that Gil feels like he ought to be able to reach in somewhere and pull a thread and draw away the bad.

 

    “This is what I mean about taking advantage of you…” Jack says, muffled but audible.

 

    “I’m offering.” He lifts himself up just enough to be able to kiss Jack’s forehead. “You don’t have to be afraid with me.”

 

    There’s a little faint hope, that if he could just show Jack how nice things could be here in the real world, how little would really change between them, that Jack would allow himself to want these things, that he might not care quite so much about the right girl. But that’s not why Gil is doing it. He wants it, he wants to get to spend forever with Jack like this, but he’d want to have just one night together if he can’t have that, he’d want to give Jack this, if he can’t give him more. To share something with him that he’s wanted to share for so long… He hopes, but he doesn’t count on anything.

 

    “Well… you-- you’re getting something you want, too…” Jack kisses Gil’s throat, and Gil whimpers. “Oh, you like that?”

 

    “Yes…” He sighs, and Jack does it again. Chuckles against him and closes his teeth gently over Gil’s adam’s apple, and this time he can’t stop his hips moving, the little high-pitched cry he doesn’t quite choke back… “ _Jack_ , Jack, take me to bed…”

 

    “Yeah-- yeah, okay, yeah…”

 

    He shifts his hold on Gil, guides Gil’s arms around him, and Gil holds on tight without being told, and then Jack stands, Gil wrapped around him, manages to carry him all the way back to Gil’s bedroom, to collapse with him on the bed.

 

    “Wow.” Gil swallows.

 

    “Yeah. Wow. I mean… you…”

 

    “That time, out on the grass--” He starts, has to communicate that it meant something to him, the song Jack had been singing, that he remembers, that he understands.

 

    “Yeah…” Jack kisses his neck again. “I wanted you then… I’ve wanted you every time, Gil… I-- I’m sorry, I am. I mean we couldn’t have then and, and not even-- But I mean I’m sorry, because I… because I reach for you, because I want you, and I can’t… I can’t… but I do want you, I want you so much… the first time I held you, I knew I was in trouble, I knew… oh, Gil, I knew I was going to be in trouble…”

 

    “I did want you, I did want to.” Gil nods.

 

    “So did you want me before I ever kissed you?” Jack smiles at him, starts working his buttons open.

 

    “Yeah. You-- the first time you held me?”

 

    “Yeah… yeah. Nothing ever felt so right…” He tears Gil’s shirt the rest of the way open, when undoing every individual button becomes too much, scatters a couple across the bedspread-- not that Gil minds, sewing a button back on is pretty easy and if it hadn’t been for Jack carrying him halfway across the apartment, this would be the hottest thing he thinks has ever happened to him. “... Sorry.”

 

    “Don’t be.” Gil grabs for the hem of Jack’s sweater. “Just-- Don’t be, let me--”

 

    Jack lets him. They get each other stripped to the waist, and then Jack’s hands are on him, everywhere, his touch firm and demanding and everything Gil’s… well, dreamed of. His hands are so big, and when they spread wide over Gil’s ribs, he feels secure, feels held safe.

 

    “Look at you…” Jack sighs, eyes moving over Gil’s body with obvious interest.

 

    “Can’t, I’m too busy looking at you.” Gil says, a little dizzy with it. He thinks Jack is a lot nicer to look at. Not just because he loves him, because he’s always loved him, but because Jack’s all lean, toned muscle, with just that little bit of dark, curling hair at the center of his chest, dark nipples that aren’t too big or weirdly small. Just a sense that in all ways Jack has grown into himself, that he’s just… _nice_. Nice to touch and look at and kiss and be with and be looked at by…

 

    He runs a hand up Jack’s arm, feeling out a bicep, a shoulder, letting his touch slide from there down to his chest. Feels the way he breathes in at it. He sighs, his own hands moving up to Gil’s chest in return. Which Gil doesn’t think is so impressive, but Jack touches him like he’s something.

 

    “Lie back.” Jack whispers, and so Gil lets his hands drop away, lets Jack just bend over him and explore. Lets Jack tweak at his nipples and kiss his throat and trace abstract whorls over his stomach with a feather-light touch that makes him squirm.

 

    He’s frantic to have his own turn, when Jack finally does pull back, to touch him and to kiss him, to feel the way his hands fit to Jack’s body, to nuzzle his way up into one underarm, and Jack laughs when his breath tickles, and doesn’t push him away. He runs his hands over the muscles of his back, rubs his cheek against his chest…

 

    He hasn’t felt like this in so long, hasn’t been this hard since he was just barely eighteen and on the verge of coming in his pants in a dream, since Jack was touching him with reverent awe on the night they broke up, unable to stop from reaching out one last time for him, and now…

 

    And now it’s okay. In the ‘real’ world, it’s okay. Not outside, but here, and he guesses he doesn’t need to hold hands on the street and invite a lot of trouble, he’d rather have Jack hold his hand here in bed and feel no fear.

 

    They get rid of the rest of their clothes, except for Gil’s socks, because they’ve got bigger things to care about and because his feet get cold and he always wears socks to bed except in summer, anyway, but they’re really here at last, his bed, their bed, naked… The heels of Gil’s hands fit perfectly to Jack’s hips, Jack’s fingertips drag down his thighs leaving fire in their wake…

 

    Jack is everything Gil could have hoped for. Not that Gil ever had a very solid grasp on what to hope for when it came to someone else’s cock-- more like now that he sees it, he heartily approves of it in size, shape, and color. He can’t imagine liking something else more.

 

    Jack pushes him back against the mattress again, this time kissing his way down, lips wet and whisper-gentle against his belly… he gets below Gil’s navel, it tickles and makes the muscles there jump a little, and Gil’s almost painfully hard, and Jack’s nose nudges his cock just slightly to the side as he nuzzles and kisses that path from belly to groin.

 

    “You’re so _blond_ …” He says, with a little laugh that stirs the hair some.

 

    “What else would I be?”

 

    “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I’ve never seen-- I’ve never been with anybody. I’ve never thought about… anything, really.”

 

    He considers Gil’s cock a moment, and Gil feels even hotter under that weighty appraisal.

 

    “You’re really sexy.” He adds.

 

    Gil laughs-- he can’t help it.

 

    “Really.” Jack picks himself up, rolling over and moving up to hold himself over Gil. “What? Even with all those girls that chase you around, you won’t believe me?”

 

    He shakes his head. “I don’t know, I don’t think that’s _why_ girls like me. Anyway, I only care about what you think. You-- really?”

 

    “Yeah.” Jack lowers his hips, grinding against Gil, slow and teasingly light on a first pass. “ _Fuck_ , yeah, Gil… you are. You, uh… wow, you are.”

 

    He laughs again, but it’s more nerves than disbelief. And Jack grinds against him again, and then… It’s like there’s a snap, like something changes the very air in the room, as they share a deep groan, as their eyes lock, and then they’re rutting into each other, then Jack is fully on top of him, chest to chest, then Jack’s hands find his and their fingers lace together and their lips meet, and it’s…

 

    It isn’t fireworks, or electricity, or any of the things Gil has heard people say about making love. It’s like some part of him has come home, and also, he’s getting off so hard. Something that’s normally tense inside him has melted, he’s not anxious or upset. He’s Jack’s.

 

    He wraps his legs around Jack’s waist and holds tight to his hands, kisses back with all he’s worth and hopes it’s this good for him, too, that he feels as safe, as worry-free, as whole. Hopes that Jack knows how much he loves him, how undemandingly, how fully.

 

    He comes, with a tiny little cry swallowed up by the kiss they’re locked in, and Jack rolls his hips against him once, twice, on the verge of overwhelming, only to still with a soft grunt.

 

    “Oh, Jack…”

 

    “Shh, shh…” He nuzzles at Gil’s cheek a moment, and manages to work his hands free of Gil’s still-impassioned hold on them, rolling off him and reaching for the tissues. He cleans Gil up first, which is very nice-- Gil hates the feel of being a mess once it starts cooling, hates feeling gross and dirty once the high wears off, hates the viscous feeling of it sitting there on his skin… He’s not sure he’d like sex very much at all if it wasn’t for the fact that he and Jack are just _made_ for each other, if it wasn’t for the feeling of being whole. Hell, even in his idle fantasies about Robert Redford, Gil never imagines _being_ touched.

 

    “Jack, I--”

 

    “Don’t.” Jack whispers. “It’s okay, just sleep… I’ll stay with you tonight, okay?”

 

    Gil nods and lets sleep take him. He’s half-aware of Jack cleaning himself up, of Jack turning out the light and tucking them in together, but everything is just the softness of encroaching slumber.

 

    In the morning, Jack is there, Gil watches him as he wakes, slow at first and then all of a sudden he’s completely alert, looking back at Gil with the same shy trepidation Gil feels.

 

    “So… last night.” He laughs nervously, but when Gil slips a hand into his, he allows it.

 

    “You were perfect.”

 

    “You were-- it was-- yeah, great, it was-- it was great, I’m sorry we--” He sighs, and brings his other hand up to neaten Gil’s hair. “I’m sorry one of us couldn’t have been a girl. And we could just do this.”

 

    “I’m not. I mean, Jack, I love you, but I wouldn’t want to do that with you if you were a girl.” Gil makes a face, though he tries to un-make it when Jack seems pained. “I guess it wouldn’t matter much if I was, though… if you’d like me the same amount.”

 

    “I don’t know if I would.” He admits. He’s never been so vulnerable awake, and Gil just wants to hold him close and do things to take care of him… “I’d marry you, though.”

 

    “Oh, Jack… really?”

 

    “Does it matter? I mean, it’s not like we can do that now. But if you were a girl, of course. We’d… it’d just be like this, I guess.”

 

    “It can be just like this. If we just don’t marry anybody, and we stay… we could stay like this.”

 

    “No, I can’t. I-- Gil, I’m not sorry about last night, but I can’t… I can’t do this forever. You know that, right?”

 

    “Yeah. I know.”

 

    He rolls over to cuddle into Jack anyway, and Jack doesn’t push him away, or stiffen up-- well, Gil feels part of Jack stiffen up, anyway.

 

    “Is this okay?” He kisses the hollow of Jack’s throat, hand hovering, waiting for a yes.

 

    “Yeah…” Jack groans. “Do you want me to--?”

 

    “Puts me to sleep.” He shakes his head.

 

    “It’s Saturday. It’s early. You could sleep while I shower and make breakfast. I-- One more time?”

 

    “One more time.” Gil nods. They never did eat dinner, the night before. He might as well spend more of the time between now and breakfast dead to the world. The hunger gnaws at him, but not as fiercely as the desire to have Jack again, to belong to Jack a little longer, in a world of their own. Even awake, a world of their own.

 

    It’s nice, lying against Jack, lips against him, hands down between them finding a rhythm, and the way Jack holds him, the way he whispers how good it is. He leaves a mark, down where it won’t show, really, unless his date develops any ideas, and if she does, Gil wants her to _know_. Not that it’s him, but that it’s someone, that he was there first, that she can’t expect to just… to just have him, and not be measured up against somebody else.

 

    Jack hisses his name and thrusts into his hand, and holds him close with one arm tight around him as he strokes him in return, and Gil lets himself come apart with him again, moans Jack’s name into his chest as they spill out together, as their combined release puddles on Jack’s stomach.

 

    He still cleans Gil up first, even though he’s the one who’s been made a mess of this time, before he urges him to roll off.

 

    “Love you.” Gil sighs sleepily, when Jack tucks the covers more fully around him.

 

    “No, you don’t.” Jack says, but it sounds like ‘ _Why_?’

 

    “You’re the man of my dreams.” He giggles, and Jack kisses his forehead.

 

    “You’re my best friend.” He says, and it sounds like ‘ _I love you, too_.’

 

    He wakes up to hot coffee and to an egg and some pancakes. They eat breakfast in their bathrobes, and Gil can see his handiwork, a livid mark just below Jack’s collarbone.

 

    He’s warm all over at the sight of it, dark berry colored against the olive of his skin, and Gil’s never left a mark on someone before, never considered the feeling it could inspire to see it there after. Jack doesn’t mention it, but Gil sees his hand stray up to touch, sees his fingers prod gently at the hazy border of it, rest over the center a long moment as he sips at his coffee and gazes into the distance.

 

    Jack doesn’t mention it, so Gil doesn’t mention it, but it’s _there_. They spend most of the day together, quiet, each with his own book. Now and then their eyes meet. It doesn’t feel like there’s much to say, it’s enough to be close.

 

    Gil has the dinner that’s been set up in the crock pot, when Jack does leave for his date, is well taken care of even in his absence. It feels less desperately lonely this time… He’d rather have Jack stay with him, but it would be short notice to cancel a date, anyway, and Jack likes going out. Something he and Gil can’t do together, not like this. To a movie once in a while, friends do that, and to eat, if it’s nothing fancy, but… not out dancing.

 

    He turns in early, after he’s found the last of his scattered buttons and sewn them back in place, but he leaves his door open. He’s not quite asleep when Jack comes home, when there’s a soft knock at the doorframe and a flood of _Upset_ that further rouses him.

 

    “Jack, hi, hey…” He rubs at one eye, blinking back sleep. “How was your date?”

 

    “Lousy. I don’t want to talk about it. I-- I just, uh, I wanted…”

 

    Gil nods and pulls back the covers. Jack sheds his clothes on the way to the bed, crawling in in nothing but his underwear. In the dim light from the hallway, Gil can still see the hickey.

 

    “You’re wearing too much.” Jack mumbles against Gil’s neck, hand sliding up under his pajama shirt. He doesn’t sound particularly amorous, and he’d said that morning was the last time, but Gil hardly minds a little more contact, the feel of Jack’s skin. He helps Jack get his top out of the way, settling into his embrace.

 

    “Goodnight, Jack.” Gil kisses his forehead, strokes through his curls.

 

    “She got mad at me.” Jack says, despite his assertion that he didn’t want to talk about it. “Maybe she was right. I thought it’d be nice for her to go out with a guy who wasn’t just trying to take advantage of her, and we have a lot in common we could talk about, I didn’t think of it like a pity date or anything, but… she goes with a lot of guys, and she’s seen me go out with a lot of different girls, and I guess she thought we both like to get around and she didn’t think I was being nice, she had _expectations_ , and I…”

 

    He falls silent a long moment, his face buried in Gil’s throat. Twice, he seems to sob a little, though when Jack does it, it feels more dignified than Gil’s own experiences with crying. He sniffs, his shoulders jerk, he holds on a little tighter until it passes.

 

    “She said maybe if I didn’t want to, Carol was right about me. I thought after everything-- I thought it all got cleared up and she wouldn’t think that about me now.” He whispers at last. “Why is it so hard to just go out as friends with a girl? I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or anything but I thought we were getting to be friends after the whole mess with Rog and everybody, but now it doesn’t matter. She thinks… I tried to, you know? We kissed, and I was going to, and I couldn’t.”

 

    Gil doesn’t know what to say. For one thing, it’s not like she’s wrong. Jack does like other guys, or at least he likes Gil, even if he tries not to. And Gil doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it, it’s not like he can say it’s a terrible accusation… but it still hurt him to have it thrown at him when he’d wanted things to just be nice, and he can’t ignore Jack’s feelings, either…

 

    “Look at it this way… everyone who heard from your old roommate and them, they know he made it up. So if she tells people, they already know there was a made-up rumor, right? And… and you go out with lots of girls--”

 

    “And they can all say I don’t try for anything. You’re the only person I’ve ever tried it with. Gil… I don’t-- I have enough to worry about, don’t I? Why do I have to be… like this? I just want to be normal. I want to get married someday. Kids, maybe, or not, either way I guess, but-- but married. With a, a home that I own, with a career. With friends… And I want to go out dancing, I like going out dancing, I like going out with girls. I just… I have this life that I always wanted, and… Why do I have to be missing something?”

 

    “You’re not missing anything.” Gil wraps his arms around Jack tight. “You’re everything. You are… Jack-- do you remember, what you said about-- about the morning after your eighteenth birthday? And-- and how I said I felt the same way? I-- I felt empty for so long, and-- and like I was missing something. And then I saw you underneath the lithographic press and I-- My whole life changed and I-- I was just waiting for it. And we spent all that time together, and it was like… I didn’t feel incomplete anymore. You have all that in you, you’re so _much_. You’re so important-- you’re important to me. The way you are is just-- it’s great, I think, but-- I mean, I know what it feels like, feeling like something’s missing, I guess. I don’t want you to feel that way, Jack.”

 

    “I wish you weren’t so sweet…”

 

    “Sorry. I just want to help.”

 

    “Don’t help me.” Jack groans. “You can’t help me. You look at me like I’m so special and it just makes it worse…”

 

    “I’m sorry, Jack.”

 

    “Don’t be. It’s not your fault you’re…” Jack trails off with a heavy sigh. “You’re you. And sometimes I think you live on another _planet_ , but just lying with you like this is nicer than anything that any girl could do for me.”

 

    “Jack?”

 

    “Mm.”

 

    “I-- Nothing. Sweet dreams.”

 

    Jack doesn’t show up in his, but he does stay in his bed.

 

    Spring turns to summer, and Jack doesn’t move out of Gil’s bed, in fact. Sometimes he cuddles close in spite of sticky heat, and other times he hangs half off the edge, and sometimes they rut against each other, sweaty palm to sweaty palm and fingers interlinked. They do things together, too-- Jack does take him to a club to listen to the punk band he likes, and a couple others, and Gil gets Jack an internship with him at Sensation!-- Jack doesn’t think much of the paper, but he’s getting experience that would transfer to any other job he might go for, once they graduate. With the break from school, Jack doesn’t go out on dates, either. It’s just the two of them.

 

    They take each other to the movies a few times. Jack takes Gil to Silent Movie, and Gil takes Jack to Murder by Death, and then Jack takes him to The Omen, and it’s not as bad as the first movie they went to, but it’s still pretty bad.

 

    This time, though, Jack undresses him-- they’ve made a habit of sleeping naked, it makes sharing the bed more comfortable in the late summer heat-- and lets Gil babble about how he won’t sleep, and lays him down, and kisses him.

 

    “You’re cute, did you know that?” He says.

 

    “This is really nice and distracting and all, Jack, but do you think the antichrist could be real?”

 

    “Well, given that I don’t believe in the -christ part to begin with, I don’t think it matters.”

 

    “Right, but putting aside that part, could there theoretically be, like… an indistinguishable-from-human spawn of Satan? Like, walking around killing people? Using otherworldly powers?”

 

    “I don’t believe in satan, either, so… no.”

 

    “... Really?”

 

    “Gil, I’m trying to get somewhere here.” Jack groans.

 

    “No Satan? So… like… if there’s no Satan, then when you go to Hell--”

 

    “Also don’t believe in hell.”

 

    Gil’s eyes widen. “I would love to not believe in Hell.”

 

    “So don’t. I’m not the boss of what you believe in. Are we done having a theological discussion?”

 

    “Well, it’s just-- see, I-- What kind of discussion did you want to have?”

 

    Jack rolls his eyes and shimmies down to the end of the bed, and does some things with his mouth that they’ve never done before.

 

    Gil can’t stay awake long enough to reciprocate, but they’ve got the rest of the summer to get it figured out.


End file.
